Waste/Water Principal Engineer

Join us as a technical expert who transforms complex customer challenges into winning solutions for water and wastewater facilities.

About the role

The Waste/Water Principal Engineer (Solution Architect) defines a technical vision and strategy for retrofit projects at existing water or wastewater facilities. As the project’s technical leader, you will integrate across disciplines and stakeholders to ensure the project achieves its vision.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision and strategy for the project, including innovative solutions and translating customer needs into project goals, objectives, requirements, and boundaries.
• Contribute to the project’s Sales and Client Management strategy, with go/no-go authority on project scope, costs, path to contract, development process, and schedule.
• Collaborate with the project core team to quantify resource needs and assist in procuring resources, including defining deliverables, scope of services, and negotiating Design Professional Agreements with third-party engineers.
• Build and maintain relationships with third-party technical resources, manufacturers, and contractors.
• Facilitate alignment among stakeholders and resources to ensure technical, financial, and contractual solutions are cohesive while identifying and quantifying risks in the project’s risk log.
• Collaborate with the Project Development Manager to manage the risk log and influence stakeholders to mitigate risks for Schneider Electric while achieving mutually beneficial risk allocation.
• Provide technical leadership to align work products and deliverables with the project’s technical strategy, ensuring customer satisfaction and solution quality.
• Facilitate and influence decision-making among technical subject matter experts and stakeholders to ensure contractually guaranteed performance while meeting project goals and risk mitigation strategies.
• Assist with issue resolution during final design, construction, and service phases to address scoping or performance issues within Schneider Electric’s contractual commitments.
• Represent the project’s technical solution during Schneider Electric management reviews.
• Collaborate with wastewater project engineers and energy engineers to ensure biological process theory, modeling, and energy savings calculations are plausible and risks are mitigated.
• Work with energy engineers and measurement and verification engineers to ensure the contract provides fair methodologies for measuring and verifying performance while mitigating Schneider Electric risk.
• Ensure the project’s contract scope delivers guaranteed performance while meeting goals, requirements, and risk mitigation strategies.
• Collaborate with the project development manager and pre-construction manager to clarify each team member’s contractual scope and ensure the sum of all parts delivers the contract scope.
• Quantify assumptions regarding construction phasing and means and methods that significantly impact project cost.
• Collaborate with the project estimator to ensure all scope elements are included in estimates, address unique construction phasing or means and methods, and financially mitigate risks per the risk log.
• Collaborate with the commissioning manager to ensure the project’s Commissioning Approach transitions construction into operating systems smoothly, with minimal impact on biological processes, and provides data for project acceptance.
• Participate in startup and commissioning services as applicable.
• Collaborate with performance assurance managers to ensure the Operations, Maintenance, Repair, and Replacement Approach quantifies roles and responsibilities for sustained guaranteed performance during the ongoing services phase.

Requirements

• Minimum 4-year college or technical degree.
• More than 5 years of equivalent work experience, including demonstrable experience owning technical solutions from inception through development, implementation, and sustainment in water treatment or wastewater facilities.
• Experience in the wastewater marketplace (preferred).
• Effective communication and project management/organization skills.
• Analytical thinking combined with strong systems engineering skills.
• Strong customer-facing and project team leadership skills.
• Good understanding of wastewater processes, electrical systems, and SCADA/instrumentation and control systems.
• Ability to understand multiple disciplines (e.g., process, architectural, civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, instrumentation and control) drawings, scope of work documents, and schematics.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office programs, including Word and Excel.

Skills

• Enterprise Architecture – advanced level; designing scalable systems aligned with customer business objectives.
• Systems Engineering – advanced level; ensuring compatibility and optimal performance across complex integrations.
• Critical Thinking – advanced level; solving ambiguous technical challenges impacting customer outcomes.
• Problem Solving – advanced level; breaking down complex issues into actionable technical solutions.
• Customer Orientation – intermediate level; understanding and anticipating customer needs throughout the sales cycle.

Travel

This position requires approximately 20-30% travel, generally one to three days in duration. Weekend travel is rare but possible, with an estimated one week of travel every two months.

Physical Demands

The physical demands include moving over rough or uneven surfaces; recurring bending, crouching, stooping, stretching, reaching, or similar activities; and recurring lifting of moderately heavy to light items. Tasks may also involve transporting items such as a laptop and luggage, and driving an automobile.

Work Environment

The work environment is primarily remote, with exposure to outside weather conditions, mechanical equipment rooms (including confined spaces and loud noises), and various job sites during project visits.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance with member reward points.
• Benefit Bucks and flexible work arrangements.
• Paid family leave and well-being programs.
• 12 holidays per year and 15 days of paid time off annually.
• Competitive base salary and short-term incentives.
• Company share ownership and 401(k) with match.
• Performance discussions and global opportunities through the Schneider Career Hub.
• Learning platforms like Coursera for skill development.
• Collaborative and inclusive workplace with recognition programs.
• Volunteer leave and programs through the Schneider Electric Foundation.
• Youth education initiatives and military leave benefits.

Pay

For this U.S.-based position, the expected pay range is USD 142,400 - USD 213,600 per year, including base pay and short-term incentives. Individual pay is determined by performance, knowledge, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.