Process Engineer - Water

Vvater Llc; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

VVater is seeking a senior Process Engineer to lead design of water and wastewater treatment systems across drinking water, industrial, and reuse applications. You will handle projects from raw water characterization through PFDs, P&IDs, BOMs, and commissioning on-site.

Ideal candidates have 7+ years in process engineering for water/wastewater, PE licensure (Texas preferred), and hands-on experience with regulation-heavy projects, modular systems, and field startup.

Qualifications

• Professional Engineer (PE) license; Texas PE preferred or ability to obtain
• Experience designing for Direct Potable Reuse or Indirect Potable Reuse under Texas/California frameworks
• Experience with electrochemical, electrocoagulation, or advanced oxidation processes
• Modular and containerized treatment system design experience
• Industrial water and wastewater experience across multiple sectors
• PFAS treatment design experience
• Familiarity with SCADA, PLC concepts, and instrumentation specs
• Strong written and verbal communication; capable of regulatory submittals
• Comfort with ambiguity and autonomous design ownership
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering (as listed) and 7+ years of hands-on experience
• Experience with full system design: PFDs, P&IDs, mass balances, hydraulic calcs, BOMs
• Deep knowledge of unit processes: coagulation, sedimentation, DAF, MF/UF/NF/RO, MBR, IFAS
• Proficiency with process modeling/design software: GPS-X, BioWin, WAVE, IMSDesign, ROSA, EPANET
• AutoCAD proficiency; P&ID/PFD drafting familiarity
• field commissioning experience; on-site startup exposure
• Knowledge of US regulatory frameworks: EPA SDWA/NPDES/NSF/ANSI standards

Responsibilities

• Design complete water and wastewater treatment systems from raw influent to finished water across multiple applications
• Produce PFDs, P&IDs, mass/energy balances, hydraulic profiles, and control narratives
• Size and specify equipment, pumps, tanks, reactors, and piping
• Develop BOMs and coordinate with procurement
• Perform process modeling and simulation as needed
• Optimize designs for CapEx, OpEx, footprint, and energy use
• Ensure designs meet regulatory standards and permit requirements
• Support permitting docs, submittals, and testing
• Stay current on PFAS rules and evolving frameworks
• Collaborate with factory floor to ensure buildability and compliance
• Review fabrication, assembly, and FAT for designed systems
• Travel to commissioning sites and lead/startup activities
• Capture lessons learned and feed into design library
• Translate customer requirements into design specifications for proposals
• Represent VVater in RFPs, pilot studies, and design reviews

Skills

PE license

Client interaction

Process design ownership

PFDs & P&IDs

Regulatory compliance

Process modeling

Equipment sizing

BOM development

Vendor coordination

Field commissioning

Education

Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering

Bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering

Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering

Master's degree preferred

Tools

GPS-X

BioWin

WAVE

IMSDesign

EPANET

AutoCAD

Job description

VVater is a US-based, next-generation water treatment company that aims to provide Water for Humankind with a cornerstone of sustainability and a promise of a better, healthier tomorrow—servicing various industries and markets around the world from Real Estate, Wastewater Treatment, Municipal Potable Water, and multiple others, in particular, focusing on the recovering and recycling of different waters in a centralized or decentralized way. The company also does artificial beaches, urban lagoons, wave pools, surf parks, aquatics, sewage treatment, wastewater, and drinking water.

Our candidate will be responsible for the design process of small, medium, and large water and wastewater projects, including working on mobile water treatment units, artificial beaches, lagoons, surf parks, and other civil & mechanical engineering-type projects that need to be managed and led by a highly motivated, experienced engineer with excellent client interaction skills. You will oversee the process design on all types of projects, including drinking water plants, mobile units, package plants, aquatics-related installations, and rapid prototyping systems, ranging in size from small to medium to multimillion-dollar water treatment and distribution and wastewater treatment and collection projects.

The Process Engineer is the technical owner of VVater's treatment system designs. You will take a customer's raw water (or wastewater) characterization, the regulatory target, and the operating constraints, and you will design the entire system that gets from one to the other. Process flow diagrams. Piping and instrumentation diagrams. Mass balances. Hydraulic calculations. Equipment specifications. Bills of materials. Process control narratives. The full package

We will be direct, because that is one of our values. This role is intense. VVater moves at a pace that is uncommon for the water industry. Designs come in fast. Customer deadlines are real. Commissioning happens when it happens, not when your calendar allows. We are not asking for someone to grind for the sake of grinding. We respect personal time when the operating tempo allows. But this is a senior technical seat in a company moving at extraordinary speed, and the right person will be energized by that pace rather than depleted by it.

If you want to design one plant a year and watch it slowly grind through permitting for 36 months, this is not your seat. If you want to design across every vertical of the water industry, see your systems built in months, and commission them in the field, this is exactly where you want to be.

Key Requirements:

• Design complete water and wastewater treatment systems from raw influent through finished water, across drinking water, wastewater, reuse, industrial, onsite, modular, recreational, and residential applications
• Produce process flow diagrams (PFDs), piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), mass and energy balances, hydraulic profiles, and process control narratives
• Size and specify all major and minor equipment, pumps, blowers, tanks, vessels, electrochemical reactors, ADAF units, instrumentation, valves, piping
• Develop bills of materials (BOMs) and partner with procurement on vendor selection and equipment sourcing
• Perform process modeling and simulation as needed (GPS-X, BioWin, WAVE, IMSDesign, custom spreadsheet and Python models)
• Optimize designs for CapEx, OpEx, footprint, energy, chemical use, and operability
• Design to applicable regulatory standards, EPA SDWA, EPA NPDES, NSF/ANSI 60 and 61, state primacy agency requirements (TCEQ and others), drinking water and wastewater discharge permits
• Support permitting documentation, regulatory submittals, and compliance demonstration testing
• Stay current on emerging regulations, PFAS rules, Lead and Copper Rule revisions, evolving state DPR/IPR frameworks
• Work directly with the factory floor team to ensure designs are buildable and meet specifications
• Review fabrication, assembly, and FAT (Factory Acceptance Testing) on systems you design
• Travel to commissioning sites; lead or support SAT (Site Acceptance Testing), startup, and performance validation
• Capture lessons learned from the field and feed them back into the design library
• Translate customer requirements into design specifications; lead technical discussions with municipal engineers, consulting firms, industrial process engineers, and end users
• Develop technical proposals, design narratives, and process write-ups that win deals
• Represent VVater technically in RFP responses, pilot studies, and design reviews

Qualifications

• Professional Engineer (PE) license — Texas PE strongly preferred, or willingness and ability to obtain Texas licensure
• Direct experience designing for Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) or Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) under Texas, California, or similar state frameworks
• Experience with electrochemical, electrocoagulation, or advanced oxidation processes
• Modular and containerized treatment system design experience
• Industrial water and wastewater experience (food and beverage, semiconductor, data center, oil and gas, mining)
• PFAS treatment design experience
• Familiarity with SCADA, PLC programming concepts, and instrumentation specification
• Bachelor's degree in Chemical, Environmental, Civil, or Mechanical Engineering (Master's preferred)
• 7+ years of hands-on water and/or wastewater treatment process engineering experience, with demonstrated breadth across multiple verticals (drinking water, wastewater, reuse, industrial)
• Demonstrated track record of full system design ownership, PFDs, P&IDs, mass balances, hydraulic calcs, equipment sizing, BOMs, across multiple commissioned projects
• Deep working knowledge of conventional and advanced unit processes: coagulation/flocculation, sedimentation, DAF, granular and membrane filtration (MF/UF/NF/RO), biological treatment (activated sludge, MBR, MBBR, IFAS), disinfection (UV, chlorine, ozone), advanced oxidation, ion exchange, electrochemical processes
• Fluency with industry-standard process modeling and design software (e.g., GPS-X, BioWin, WAVE, IMSDesign, ROSA, EPANET)
• AutoCAD proficiency; familiarity with P&ID and PFD drafting conventions (ISA, ANSI)
• Field commissioning experience, you have been on site for startup, not only in the office
• Strong working knowledge of US regulatory frameworks, EPA SDWA, NPDES, NSF/ANSI standards, state primacy requirements (TCEQ especially valued)
• Hands-on fluency with modern AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or equivalents); ability to vibe-code internal engineering tools and automations
• Exceptional written and verbal communication; you can write a process design narrative, a technical proposal, and a regulatory submittal with equal clarity
• Comfort with ambiguity, you do not need a senior engineer to walk you through every design

**As a part of our process to ensure a comprehensive evaluation of all applicants, assessment tests are required as part of our recruitment process. Unfortunately, should you elect not to participate in completing the assessment tests, your application will not be able to progress to the next stage or taken into consideration during evaluation.