Principal Process Engineer (Water)

Location: Austin, TX, US

Company

hirify.global develops electric-field and advanced water-purification technologies for drinking water, wastewater, potable reuse, industrial, onsite, recreational, residential, and consumer health applications.

What you will do

• Design complete water and wastewater treatment systems across drinking water, wastewater, reuse, industrial, onsite, modular, recreational, and residential applications.
• Produce PFDs, P&IDs, mass and energy balances, hydraulic profiles, process control narratives, equipment specifications, and bills of materials.
• Size and specify treatment equipment, pumps, blowers, tanks, vessels, electrochemical reactors, ADAF units, instrumentation, valves, and piping.
• Model and optimize systems for CapEx, OpEx, footprint, energy use, chemical use, and operability using appropriate software and custom models.
• Support permitting, regulatory submittals, compliance testing, fabrication reviews, FAT, commissioning, SAT, startup, and performance validation.
• Translate customer requirements into design specifications, lead technical discussions and design reviews, prepare proposals and regulatory documentation, and maintain alignment between design-basis data, digital-twin models, and CAD functions.

Requirements

• Professional Engineer (PE) license required; Texas PE is strongly preferred, or willingness and ability to obtain Texas licensure.
• Master's degree in Environmental, Chemical, Civil, or Mechanical Engineering required; PhD preferred.
• Direct experience designing Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) or Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR) systems under Texas, California, or similar state frameworks.
• 7+ years of hands-on water and/or wastewater treatment process engineering experience with breadth across drinking water, wastewater, reuse, and industrial applications.
• Demonstrated ownership of full system designs across multiple commissioned projects, including PFDs, P&IDs, mass balances, hydraulic calculations, equipment sizing, and BOMs.
• Experience with electrochemical, electrocoagulation, or advanced oxidation processes; modular and containerized treatment systems; industrial water and wastewater; and PFAS treatment design.
• Deep knowledge of coagulation/flocculation, sedimentation, DAF, granular and membrane filtration, biological treatment, disinfection, advanced oxidation, ion exchange, and electrochemical processes.
• Fluency with process modeling and design software such as GPS-X, BioWin, WAVE, IMSDesign, ROSA, and EPANET; AutoCAD proficiency and familiarity with ISA, ANSI, P&ID, and PFD drafting conventions.
• Field commissioning experience, including on-site startup; familiarity with SCADA, PLC programming concepts, and instrumentation specification.
• Strong knowledge of US regulatory frameworks, including EPA SDWA, NPDES, NSF/ANSI standards, and state primacy requirements, especially TCEQ.
• Hands-on fluency with AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or equivalents, including the ability to build internal engineering tools and automations.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication; ability to prepare process design narratives, technical proposals, and regulatory submittals.
• Comfort with ambiguity and strong first-principles knowledge of mass balance, hydraulics, reaction kinetics, and unit-operation sizing.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time role in Austin, Texas.
• Fast-paced work environment with real customer deadlines and frequent commissioning activity.
• Direct collaboration with factory-floor, procurement, municipal, consulting, industrial, and end-user stakeholders.
• Opportunity to design systems across multiple water-industry verticals and see them built and commissioned in the field.

Hiring process

• Assessment tests are required as part of the recruitment process.
• Applicants who do not complete the assessment tests cannot progress to the next stage or be considered.