Water Quality and Regulatory Business Class Lead
At HDR, our employee-owners are fully engaged in creating a welcoming environment where each of us is valued and respected, a place where everyone is empowered to bring their authentic selves and novel ideas to work every day. As we foster a culture of inclusion throughout our company and within our communities, we constantly ask ourselves: What is our impact on the world?
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Each and every role throughout our organization makes a difference in our ability to change the world for the better. Read further to learn how you could help make great things possible not only in your community, but around the world.
We believe water is more than a resource, it's a shared responsibility. As part of our Water Business Group, you’ll help shape how communities manage water for generations to come. From delivering safe drinking water and treating wastewater responsibly to developing sustainable water supplies and protecting lives and property through flood control, your work will directly support public health, environmental sustainability, and infrastructure resilience. We bring together experts across disciplines to solve complex challenges with bold thinking and technical excellence. Whether you're modernizing aging systems or pioneering innovative approaches, your contributions will make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. This isn’t just a job, it's a chance to lead change, drive progress, and leave a lasting legacy.
The Water Quality and Regulatory Business Class Lead (WQR Lead) will provide strategic and technical leadership for water quality, watershed, and regulatory compliance services across the organization. This role will connect expertise in receiving-water and watershed modeling, monitoring, water quality standards, NPDES permitting, TMDLs, integrated planning, use attainability analyses, site-specific criteria, and emerging contaminants to help clients anticipate regulatory change and develop practical, science-based solutions. The WQR Lead will collaborate across market sectors, business classes, and geographies to strengthen technical capabilities, align services with evolving client needs, and position the organization as a trusted advisor on complex water quality challenges. The position will guide the pursuit and delivery of multidisciplinary projects involving nutrient and dissolved oxygen management, harmful algal blooms, temperature, conventional pollutants, toxics, mixing zones, hydrodynamics, and integrated watershed planning. Working with technical experts, client managers, and project teams, the WQR Lead will support regulatory strategy, quality and risk management, technical staffing, applied research, staff development, and the translation of emerging science and regulations into consistent tools and services. Success will be measured by stronger project delivery, expanded technical capacity, greater collaboration across the organization, and meaningful water quality outcomes for clients and communities.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership
- Define and advance the organization’s water quality and regulatory strategy, aligning technical capabilities, investments, and market priorities with evolving regulations, watershed challenges, and client needs.
- Provide thought leadership on emerging water quality issues, including nutrient management, dissolved oxygen, harmful algal blooms, toxics, PFAS and other emerging contaminants, temperature, wet-weather impacts, water reuse, and climate-related changes in receiving waters.
- Promote watershed-based and One Water solutions that integrate wastewater, stormwater, drinking water, reuse, water resources, utility planning, and asset management to achieve measurable and affordable water quality outcomes.
- Build and connect a national network of technical specialists, while identifying capability gaps and guiding strategic recruiting, staff development, succession planning, applied research, and knowledge sharing.
- Strengthen project delivery and strategic pursuits by establishing consistent technical approaches, assembling multidisciplinary teams, supporting regulatory negotiations, managing technical risk, and translating complex science and policy into actionable client strategies.
- Elevate the organization’s market presence and influence through relationships with clients, regulators, research institutions, watershed organizations, and industry associations, as well as leadership in research, publications, conferences, and regulatory forums.
Technical Expertise and Delivery
- Provide technical leadership for watershed and receiving-water quality assessments, including monitoring, source characterization, loading analyses, pollutant fate and transport, and evaluation of physical, chemical, and biological indicators.
- Direct watershed, hydrodynamic, and water quality modeling to evaluate nutrients, dissolved oxygen, temperature, toxics, pathogens, harmful algal blooms, emerging contaminants, and other water quality challenges.
- Lead development of regulatory strategies involving water quality standards, 303(d) listings, TMDLs, reasonable potential analyses, water quality-based effluent limits, mixing zones, variances, compliance schedules, integrated planning, adaptive management, and discharge permit negotiations.
Integrate receiving-water science, treatment performance, source control, infrastructure planning, affordability, and stakeholder priorities to develop technically defensible and implementable water quality and compliance solutions.
- Evaluate watershed improvement alternatives, including treatment optimization, industrial pretreatment and source control, green infrastructure, wetlands and nature-based solutions, reuse, habitat restoration, and point and nonpoint source management.
- Establish technical standards and oversee QA/QC, model and data review, assumptions and uncertainty documentation, independent technical review, and preparation of clear, decision-ready deliverables.
- Deploy multidisciplinary HDR resources to deliver complex regional and watershed-scale water quality projects and clearly communicate technical findings, regulatory risks, environmental benefits, and recommended actions.
Business Development
- Identify, develop and pursue new business opportunities with targeted wastewater, drinking water and water resources clients with current and future water quality challenges.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with clients, regulatory agencies, and community stakeholders.
- Support the preparation of proposals, cost estimates, and project scopes to secure new contracts.
Team Management
- Mentor and develop a team of engineers, scientists, modelers and project managers.
- Foster a collaborative, innovative, and inclusive work environment.
- Allocate resources effectively to maximize productivity and client satisfaction.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Civil Engineering, Environmental Science, Water Resources, or a related field.
- Professional Engineer (PE) or Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) designation preferred.
- 15+ years of experience in watershed management, including at least 5 years in a leadership role.
- Proven track record in managing complex water resource projects, including storm water, drinking water and wastewater systems.
- Strong understanding of watershed modeling tools (e.g., HEC-HMS, SWMM) and GIS applications.
- Excellent communication, leadership, and organizational skills.
- Leadership in industry associations including a visible profile in the market sector.
- Ability to work cooperatively with other Market Sector Directors, Business Class Directors, Regional Business Group Directors, Area Business Group Managers, Area Marketing Managers and Department Managers
- An understanding of wastewater utilities and agencies across the US and abroad including key industry trends, drivers, challenges and innovations
- Demonstrated commitment to HDR values.
- An attitude and commitment to being an active participant of our employee-owned culture is a must.
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- Bachelor's degree in a Professional, Architecture, Engineering or closely related field
- A minimum of 10 years of experience in related field
- For Business Class leadership roles for which the core service being overseen is technical design, the role must maintain a professional or Architecture/Engineering registration and has related technical experience
- Experienced in development and management of diverse teams
- Works cooperatively with other business class directors, operations managers, technical directors and marketing managers on business class efforts
- Committed to quality, improvement and HDR values
- An attitude and commitment to being an active participant of our employee-owned culture is a must
What We Believe
HDR is our company. Together, we build on each other's life experiences and perspectives to make great things possible every day. This shapes our collaborative culture, encourages organizational trust and connects us closer to the clients and communities we serve.
Our Commitment
As employee owners, we all have a role in creating an inclusive environment where each of us is welcomed, valued, respected and empowered to bring our authentic selves to work every day.
Our eight Employee Network Groups (Asian Pacific, Black, Hispanic/Latino(a), LGBTQ+, People with Disabilities, Veterans, Women, Young Professionals) help create a sense of belonging and foster a supportive environment where everyone is empowered to engage and contribute. Each group has an executive sponsor and is open to all employees.
