Landscape Designer

Ceres+ Landscape Architecture; Eagle (CO); On-site; USD 65,000 - 75,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) match

Life and AD&D insurance

Employee assistance program

Paid time off

Relocation support

Education and licensure support

Job summary

Ceres+ Landscape Architecture, based in Eagle, Colorado, seeks an early-career designer to join its intimate studio that designs in the Colorado high country. You will work directly with the principal and senior designers, producing plans, CAD drawings, and client-ready deliverables while visiting project sites to ground design decisions in reality.

The role emphasizes strong CAD skills, initiative, and clear communication, with growth toward independent project contributions as your experience

Qualifications

• 1–3 years out of school with CAD proficiency.
• Strong production skills in landscape design software.
• Ability to sit down and produce clean, accurate drawings.
• Initiative and proactive communication with the team.

Responsibilities

• Design plans and construction documents in AutoCAD.
• Create concepts in digital hand drawing and image boards for client presentations.
• Prepare deliverable sheets and image boards for client review.
• Visit sites to take measurements and observe work in the field.
• Assist in submittals through HOAs and design review boards; learn water-conscious design.

Skills

CAD

AutoCAD

Morpholio

Digital hand drawing

Photoshop

InDesign

Illustrator

Communication

Initiative

Design judgment

Construction knowledge

Tools

AutoCAD

Morpholio

Photoshop

InDesign

Illustrator

iPad

Job description

Design in the Colorado high country, and learn it from people who have spent their careers here.

Ceres+ is the landscape architecture studio inside Ceres Landcare, which has been designing, building and caring for landscapes in the Colorado high country since 1981. Six designers work out of the Eagle office, and the firm has stayed small on purpose. The work shows it: meadowscape planting held inside steel planters and low site walls, a boulder-and-stone slab staircase that tightens the approach before passing through a gap in a serviceberry hedgerow, a cantilevered glass-bottomed pool, a pond alive with trout, and twenty-five thousand square feet of thirsty bluegrass turned back into meadow under a stand of mature aspens.

The properties are what you would expect in this valley: ski-in, ski-out homes, mountain estates and sprawling ranches, owners who care as much about the landscape as they do about the architecture, and civic work like the gateways at Edwards and Arrowhead. Difficult sites, design review boards and a short building season come with the territory. Because the same company that draws the plan builds it and then cares for it season after season, your drawings get built by people down the hall, and you get to watch how they hold up.

Every project here runs the same arc, and you will touch all of it:

What You Will Be Doing

This is the seat the whole studio leans on. You will work directly with the studio’s principal and its senior designers, supporting their projects and taking on more of the design work yourself as your skills build.

The design work. Most of your week is spent designing: plans and construction documents in AutoCAD, concepts in digital hand drawing, deliverable sheets and image boards that go in front of clients. This studio designs with restraint, proportion and an honest use of materials, so the details carry real weight, and the craft you build here is what separates a strong school portfolio from a professional one.

Working with the team. You will support several projects at once across the senior designers, so staying organized and knowing what each one needs from you is a real part of the job. Communication runs throughout the day here rather than in scheduled check-ins, which means you always know where a project stands and where you are needed next, and nobody expects you to work something out alone.

Getting out of the office. You will visit sites to take measurements for base drawings and to see how the work is coming together in the field. That is where the design lessons land fastest.

Approvals and water. You will help carry submittals through HOAs, design review boards and municipalities, and you will learn how water shapes nearly every design decision at this elevation.

Variety. No two days look quite the same. Priorities shift, a site visit lands in the middle of an afternoon, and you become the person the team can hand something to knowing it will get done. If that sounds energizing rather than exhausting, you will like it here.

Who This Role Is Built For

• One to three years out of school. At least a year in a design office where you got fast and confident in CAD. If you are coming from a design-build or a smaller shop, closer to two.
• Strong production skills. You can sit down and produce clean, accurate work in the software that matters. School teaches a little of everything, and this is where you go deep.
• The tools. AutoCAD is the base drawing platform, concepts move into digital hand drawing on an iPad in Morpholio or something like it, construction documents come back into AutoCAD, and Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator run through the whole process. Moving easily between them is the skill.
• Initiative. You take something on and move it forward without being checked on, and you speak up early when you are stuck.
• Communication. This studio runs on it. You keep the designers you are supporting current on where your work stands, and you ask the question rather than guess at the answer.
• Design judgment. Enough to make the small calls yourself, and enough humility to be coached on the bigger ones.
• An eye for how things get built. The designers who have done best here came out of a landscape architecture program with a real pull toward construction and detailing. That instinct for how a thing goes together counts for more here than theory does.

Helpful, not required: plant knowledge for this elevation. The palette here is specific to the valley and even to microclimates within it, and almost nobody arrives with it, so it is something you will build here. A landscape architecture background with strong design software skills translates well.

Who You Will Learn From

You will work directly for the principal landscape architect, alongside a team of senior designers who have spent most of their careers designing in these mountains. Think of them as mentors more than a reporting line. Working beside them is how you learn the judgment behind the work: how a landscape gets its proportion, when to hold back, which materials earn their place. That takes years to build and is nearly impossible to pick up on your own. The same longevity runs through the build and maintenance teams, so the crews installing your work this year are the ones you will be talking to next year. This team is deliberate about bringing early-career designers along, and when someone shows real strength in a direction, they will build the role around it.

Good design is inseparable from good care.

Living in the Valley

Eagle County is the kind of place people move to and then stay. The team here works hard and plays hard, and the mountains are the reason most of them have been here as long as they have. You do not need to be a skier or a climber, you just need to enjoy what this valley offers, because that is what makes living here worth it. Housing takes some planning, so relocation support is available for the right person.

How Success Is Measured

In your first months, success looks like drawings that come back accurate, deliverables ready to put in front of a client, and feedback you only need to hear once. By the end of your first year, you are trusted with more of the work, you communicate easily across design and build, and your drawings need fewer rounds to get there.

From there it keeps going. The designers on this team who are two and three years in are knocking on the door of running their own projects and sitting with clients themselves. That is a real path here, and it is earned over several years rather than promised in a posting.

Compensation and Benefits

Base salary ranges from $65,000 to $75,000 a year, based on experience.

Beyond the paycheck, the benefits are built to take care of you:

• Health covered the way you actually use it. Medical, dental and vision through Cigna, with three medical plans to choose from, plus HSA and FSA options.
• A 401(k) match worth taking. Safe Harbor 401(k) matching up to 4 percent, with immediate 100 percent vesting. Roth or traditional, your call.
• A safety net for the unexpected. Optional life and AD&D, short- and long-term disability, and legal coverage at group rates.
• Real support for real life. A free, confidential assistance program for you and your whole household, plus optional pet insurance.
• Time to live. Paid time off and company holidays.
• Help getting here. Relocation support is available for the right candidate moving into the Eagle Valley.
• Room to keep building. We pay for certifications, licenses and continuing education, including the path to landscape architecture licensure, and designers here grow into bigger seats as their skills grow.

Let Us See Your Work

You already have the first couple of years behind you. Where you spend the next few is what decides how good you get. The sites here are demanding, the studio is small enough that your work shows on every project, and the people around you have built careers in these mountains and are invested in making you good at this.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer visa sponsorship, now or in the future. Ceres participates in E-Verify and confirms the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees. Employment is contingent on a satisfactory background check and an acceptable driving record.

Ceres is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or any other status protected by law.