Per-MW pricing, regional variance, and cost drivers for owners scoping hyperscale & AI builds.
Salary benchmarks across the 14 mission-critical disciplines.
Treatment plants, conveyance and storage tunnels, desalination, and potable reuse — the capital programs rebuilding America’s water systems. iRecruit.co’s water infrastructure recruiters place the project managers, superintendents, estimators, and commissioning leaders who carry WTP and WWTP builds from NTP to substantial completion — from project engineer to the executive who owns the program.
Not a generalist construction desk with a municipal folder. A dedicated water practice concentrated in the people who deliver treatment plants, conveyance, desalination, and reuse — across CMAR, progressive design-build, and DBO delivery models, on contractor and owner-side teams alike. We follow the live programs on our water infrastructure construction tracker and are assembling a bench against that pipeline.
Water treatment plant construction from conventional filtration to membrane, ozone, and UV trains — and wastewater plant expansions built as structural concrete at production scale. Basins, clarifiers, and digesters; process mechanical and yard piping; and the MOPO-sequenced tie-ins that keep an operating plant on line while you rebuild it.
GAC, ion exchange, and reverse-osmosis retrofits moving on EPA’s PFAS compliance clock. Pilot-to-full-scale conversions on live wellfields, media changeout logistics, and the commissioning documentation state primacy agencies actually accept — on plants that cannot stop producing water while you build.
TBM storage and conveyance tunnels driven under consent decrees, deep shafts and drop structures, microtunneling, and large-diameter transmission mains. Aging-infrastructure replacement on interceptors laid a century ago — the CSO programs where ground behavior, logistics, and permitting set the schedule.
Seawater RO on the Texas coast, brackish desalination inland, and potable reuse from IPR spreading basins to the country’s first direct-to-distribution facilities. UV-AOP trains, concentrate management, and the commissioning-heavy back end where reuse programs are actually won or lost.
Raw-water intakes, high-service pump stations, lift stations rehabilitated under live bypass, elevated and ground storage, and reservoir and dam programs — the hydraulic backbone between source and tap, and the scopes where startup discipline separates on-time from late.
Industrial users are now anchor water customers — a single hyperscale campus can draw millions of gallons a day, which is why our data center construction practice and this one trade candidates. We also build owner-side PMO and program management teams for utilities delivering decade-long CIPs.
Every title below links to a dedicated hiring page for that role. The span is deliberate — iRecruit.co places from project engineer to executive, and most water infrastructure engagements involve a coordinated set of three to five of these roles on the same plant, tunnel, or program.
Owns delivery on WTP and advanced-treatment builds — process mechanical coordination, submittal and RFI flow, state primacy inspections, and the startup sequence from clean-water fill through performance test.
Runs the field on treatment plant sites — mass concrete pours, MOPO tie-ins on operating plants, confined-space and trench-protection discipline, and the sub coordination that keeps basins on the pour schedule.
Carries conveyance, pump station, and plant packages from NTP to closeout — subcontracts, self-perform crews, owner and engineer interfaces, and the milestone exposure that comes with a consent decree.
Sequences excavation and shoring, dewatering, deep utilities, and structural concrete across plant yards and linear sites measured in miles — and keeps crews productive through weather and ground surprises.
Owns cost and schedule across multi-package water programs — earned value on unit-price and GMP work, TIA-ready schedules, and the reporting stack SRF and WIFIA funding requires.
Plans and runs startup on process facilities — functional and performance testing, instrument loop checks, SCADA integration, and operator training through acceptance and handover.
Prices self-perform concrete and process mechanical scope, subcontractor buyout, and multi-year escalation — from hard-bid design-bid-build to CMAR GMPs and progressive design-build pursuits.
Whichever model fits your program, every water infrastructure engagement runs on the same delivery discipline — clear scope up front, verified candidates, and full ownership of the process through offer and start.
30 minutes with a water practice lead. We map the roles, credential stack, and geography against your bid date and milestone schedule — and quote a concrete proposal, with pricing, within 48 hours.
A dedicated recruiter from the water practice runs intake with your hiring managers and calibrates on the first candidates. Qualified slates in 14–21 days on retained engagements.
Every candidate verified against delivered scope — MGD and structure types, delivery model, OSHA 30 and confined-space credentials — and references who watched them hit, or miss, a substantial-completion date.
Offers structured for program reality — per-diem and traveler math on remote plant sites, relocation for multi-year CIPs — plus notice-period management and replacement guarantees on retained roles.
30-minute scoping call — we map the roles, credentials, and geography against your program schedule, and quote a concrete proposal within 48 hours.
Five models, each priced per solution. Retained search where confidentiality and certainty matter most; success-fee support where speed matters; RPO and embedded models where volume makes placement-by-placement pricing the wrong shape; and contract staffing for surge scopes. Most water clients run two models in parallel across a CIP.
Retained search for VPs of construction, program directors, and project executives — confidential, calibrated, and guaranteed.
Pricing — retained, 30% of first-year compensation, with replacement guarantee
Success-fee search for PMs, superintendents, estimators, and commissioning talent — full practice depth, pay on placement.
Pricing — 20% success fee, no upfront fee on single roles
Full recruitment process outsourcing for program ramps — one team, one process, every open req from field engineer to director.
Pricing — from a $15k service fee plus volume pricing
A dedicated recruiter or pod inside your systems and standups, scaled to monthly hiring volume across a program.
Pricing — monthly volume-based fee + success fee at a reduced rate
Contract and contract-to-hire field staff for outage, tie-in, and startup surges — deployed fast, converted when you want to keep them.
Pricing — transparent hourly bill rates by role and market
A VP of construction, a program director, or a project executive your consent-decree date — or your GMP — depends on, and the search can't leak to the market. Executive search gives you confidentiality, a calibrated slate in 14–21 days, and a replacement guarantee.
A full delivery team — PM, superintendent, project controls, commissioning, QA/QC — hired against a mobilization date across one or several sites. RPO puts one coordinated team on the whole role set, with program pricing instead of stacked placement fees.
Roles open every month across concurrent packages and your internal team is stretched thin. Embedded recruiting puts a dedicated talent partner inside your hiring workflow — running intake, sourcing, and interviews on your systems.
Consent decrees, compliance clocks, and growth decide where water and wastewater construction happens — not state lines. iRecruit.co places nationwide, and we structure per-diem, rotation, and relocation packages calibrated to program reality, because the best treatment-plant superintendent in the country is rarely 40 minutes from your laydown yard.
A water infrastructure recruiter sources, qualifies, and places the construction talent that carries treatment plants, conveyance tunnels, desalination, and reuse programs from notice-to-proceed through acceptance — project managers, superintendents, estimators, project controls, commissioning managers, and the executives above them. The difference between specialist water infrastructure recruiters and a generalist construction staffing desk is what gets verified: delivered MGD and structure types, delivery-model experience across CMAR, progressive design-build, and DBO, confined-space and OSHA 30 credentials, and references who watched the candidate hit — or miss — a substantial-completion date. iRecruit.co recruits across the full span, project engineer to executive.
Fees follow the engagement model. Retained executive search — VPs of construction, program directors, project executives — runs on a retained fee of 30% of first-year compensation, paid in stages, with a replacement guarantee. Success-fee recruiting support for project managers, superintendents, and engineers runs at a 20% success fee with no upfront fee on single roles — you pay on placement. RPO starts from a $15k service fee plus volume pricing, and embedded recruiting runs on a monthly volume-based fee + success fee at a reduced rate. A 30-minute scoping call gets you a concrete, per-role quote within 48 hours.
Commissioning managers and process-experienced superintendents are the scarcest profiles on water treatment plant construction. Startup on a membrane, ozone, or GAC train demands people who have run functional and performance testing on live process facilities — and every PFAS retrofit and reuse program in the country is competing for the same short bench. Close behind: project managers who have delivered MOPO-sequenced tie-ins inside operating plants, and estimators fluent in self-perform concrete and process mechanical scope on CMAR and progressive design-build pursuits.
Tunnel programs hire around the machine; plants hire around the process. A TBM drive needs tunnel-cycle leadership — shaft and heading superintendents, TBM engineers, segment logistics, ground-conditions judgment — concentrated in a small team that runs 24/7 for two or three years. A treatment plant spreads hiring across structural concrete, process mechanical, electrical and controls, and a commissioning-heavy back end. Wastewater construction programs under consent decrees often run both at once, which is why we scope the whole program — not one req at a time.
Yes. PFAS remediation is one of the fastest-growing hiring drivers in the sector: EPA’s national drinking water standards put thousands of utilities on a compliance clock, and each GAC, ion-exchange, or RO retrofit needs project managers, superintendents, and commissioning leaders who can build on live wellfields and operating plants. iRecruit.co recruits for PFAS treatment retrofits, pilot-to-full-scale conversions, and the owner-side program teams that manage them — alongside the SRF and WIFIA funding reporting those programs carry.
Yes — delivery model is one of the first things we calibrate. CMAR and progressive design-build pursuits need estimators and preconstruction leaders who can carry a GMP conversation with an owner’s engineer; DBO programs need people comfortable being scored on operating cost, not just first cost; and hard-bid heavy civil needs a different commercial reflex entirely. We verify which delivery models a candidate has actually delivered under — and match to how your contract is actually structured.
30-minute scoping call. We map the roles, the credentials, the geography, and the engagement model that fits your program — and quote a concrete proposal within 48 hours.
iRecruit.co places project engineers through executives across treatment plant, tunnel, desalination, and reuse programs in every major U.S. market. Submit your resume to be matched to confidential roles across the searches we run.
