Design Director Jobs in Maine (NOW HIRING)

You have been the one who catches the errors before they leave the office. You have redlined the same mistake on three different drafters' sheets and wondered why nobody wrote it down the first time. You have watched good people leave because no one taught them, no one coached them, and no one gave them a real seat at the table.

You are ready to run a CAD group the way you always wished yours was run.

If that's you, keep reading.

Tech Air is a mechanical and HVAC company built by people who care about the work leaving their hands. That sounds simple. In this trade, it is rare.

We hire for roots. We want people who plan to stay, who want to know their coworkers by name, and who take pride in a drawing set the field can build from without a single phone call back.

We give our leaders real authority. When you set a standard here, the standard holds. When you move a person or a priority, the move sticks. You will not be second-guessed by three layers above you every time you make a call.

We treat drafters as designers, not production line workers. That is the difference you will feel on day one, and it is the difference your team will feel every day after.

If a shop that respects the craft sounds like home, keep reading.

• You lead by email and avoid the desks of the people who work for you.
• You are more comfortable finishing the drawing yourself than teaching someone else to finish it right.
• You go quiet when a senior person pushes back on a standard you set.
• You patch the same mistake over and over rather than chasing the reason it keeps coming back.
• You want a title more than you want a team.
• You are looking for a stop on the way to somewhere else.

You check in with each person on your team every day. Not a status ping. A real conversation, at their desk, about what they are working on and where they are stuck.

You give feedback in the moment and write down what you said. You believe a person deserves to know where they stand without waiting for a review cycle to find out.

You hold the standard when someone senior leans on you to bend it. You do it without heat, and you explain your thinking so the other person can follow the logic.

You know who on your team is behind this week without having to ask around. You reassign work before anyone has to raise a hand.

You raise a risk while there is still time to fix it. You would rather have a hard conversation on Monday than a worse one on Friday.

You take pride in work that holds up before anyone else looks at it. A review is a courtesy to the next person, not a safety net for your team.

You like watching a drafter grow into more than they were hired for. That is the part of the job you would do for free.

Every drawing gets a review before it leaves your group. Rework caused by an internal mistake is rare, and when it happens, you trace it to the root and fix it at the source.

The field and project teams build from what you send. They trust the numbers on the sheet because you earned that trust one drawing at a time.

You own the standards, the templates, and the conventions the whole group works from. A drafter moving from one job to the next finds the same playbook waiting for them.

When a standard needs to change, you make the change deliberately, communicate it clearly, and see the team adopt it cleanly. Output stays uniform across the group instead of drifting person by person.

You read the schedule ahead. You move people to the jobs that need to move, and you resolve constraints before they stall a project. CAD hours stay close to plan because you watch the work weekly.

When a risk is bigger than the group can absorb, you bring it to leadership early with a clear picture of what is at stake.

Questions from the field and project teams get a response within a business day. The people waiting on your group keep moving because your group holds up its side of the exchange.

You sit down with project managers every week and stay ahead of what is coming. The relationship stays built on trust, not chased-down answers.

You lead through daily contact, regular coaching, and reviews finished on schedule. Your drafters know where they stand and where they are headed.

You give them real ownership in the design side of the work. That ownership is what they came for, and it is what keeps them here.

Sound like the seat you have been waiting for? Read on.

What will help you succeed here:

• Seven or more years of CAD drafting experience in HVAC, mechanical, or construction environments.
• Three or more years leading a CAD or drafting team, with more weight on how you lead people than on how deep you draft.
• A track record of keeping a team together through daily contact, coaching, and reviews finished on schedule.
• Advanced command of the CAD tools used in mechanical and HVAC construction.
• Working knowledge of BIM coordination and how CAD output feeds the field and project workflows downstream.
• Proven ability to own standards, templates, and pre-release quality control across concurrent projects.
• Strong command of construction documents, shop drawings, and RFI workflows.
• Local roots and a clear reason to stay in the area for the long haul.
• Preferred: technical school, associate degree, or formal CAD training.
• Preferred: a CAD or BIM certification.

Pay range is $100,000 to $130,000.

We are happy to walk you through the full benefits picture during the interview. Bring your questions.