Lead Process Engineer Jobs in Austin, TX (NOW HIRING)

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 tomorrowservicing 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.