Waste/Water Principal Engineer

About the role

Join us as a technical expert who transforms complex customer challenges into winning solutions. The Waste/Water Principal Engineer (Solution Architect) defines a technical vision and strategy for projects focused on the retrofit of existing water or wastewater facilities. You will function as the project’s technical leader, collaboratively integrating across multiple disciplines and a diverse portfolio of external and internal stakeholders to ensure the project achieves its vision.

Responsibilities

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

Travel

This position requires approximately 20-30% travel, generally of one to three days' 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; recurring lifting of moderately heavy to light items; and transporting items such as a laptop computer and luggage. Driving an automobile is also required.

Work Environment

The work environment includes regular exposure to a remote working setting. During project site visits, exposure to outside weather conditions, mechanical equipment rooms (which may include confined spaces and loud noises), and varying job site environments is expected.

Skills

• Enterprise Architecture – Advanced level; designing scalable systems that align with customer business objectives.
• Systems Engineering – Advanced level; ensuring compatibility and optimal performance across complex integrations.
• Critical Thinking – Advanced level; solving ambiguous technical challenges that impact 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.

Qualifications

• Minimum 4-year college degree 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.
• Preferred experience in the wastewater marketplace.
• 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 & control systems.
• Ability to understand multiple disciplines (e.g., process, architectural, civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, instrumentation & control) drawings, scope of work documents, and schematics.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office programs, including Word and Excel.

Benefits

Schneider Electric’s Total Rewards package includes:

• Care for Yourself and Your Family: Medical (with member reward points), dental, vision, and basic life insurance; Benefit Bucks; flexible work arrangements; paid family leave; well-being programs; 12 holidays per year; and 15 days of paid time off per year.
• Invest and Plan Your Future: Competitive base salary, incentives, company share ownership, and a 401(k) with match.
• Grow Your Skills and Career: Performance discussions, global opportunities, the Schneider Career Hub, and learning platforms like Coursera.
• Team Up in the Workplace: Collaboration, recognition, an inclusive workplace, and opportunities to share your voice.
• Support Your Community: Volunteer leave, programs with 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. This range includes base pay and short-term incentives. Individual pay is determined by performance, knowledge, job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.