Location: New South Wales preferred, with flexibility for the right candidate
Employment type: Full-time, Hybrid
Level: Principal Engineer, Technical Director, depending on experience
Professional accreditation: CPEng mandatory
About BetterAIM
BetterAIM is a specialist national advisory firm focused on infrastructure, asset management, and organisational performance. We work with government agencies, utilities, councils, ports, and private sector clients to deliver practical, sustainable, and evidence-based solutions across the asset lifecycle.
Our work helps clients make better decisions, improve asset management maturity, strengthen organisational capability, and deliver infrastructure outcomes that support communities.
As we continue to grow, we are seeking a senior water infrastructure planning professional to strengthen our technical capabilities, expand our master planning and infrastructure planning workstreams, and support the delivery of high-quality client outcomes.
About the Role
We are seeking an experienced Principal Engineer – Water Advisory / Technical Director to join BetterAIM in a senior advisory, technical, and leadership capacity.
This role is centred on water infrastructure planning, master planning, hydraulic analysis, systems-based strategy, and long-term asset planning. It is suited to a senior practitioner with hands-on experience in infrastructure planning, who understands the realities of operating, maintaining, renewing, upgrading, and investing in complex infrastructure systems.
The successful candidate will be able to deliver technically sound work while also helping grow BetterAIM's infrastructure planning and master planning capability. You will work alongside our Technical Directors to do this. You will bring practical water engineering experience, strong hydraulic modelling and analysis skills, and the ability to translate technical findings into strategic, implementable advice for clients. This includes supporting clients to understand system performance, capacity constraints, growth pressures, service and compliance risks, renewal needs, and long-term investment requirements.
The role requires a strong practical understanding of how asset management activities integrate with long-term infrastructure planning. You will help clients connect asset performance, service levels, growth, risk, renewal demand, operational constraints, and investment decisions into coherent long-term strategies, infrastructure plans, and management plans.
The role also requires an authentic, relationship-based approach to client engagement. You will build trust with clients by listening carefully, understanding their operating context, and collaborating to develop practical, implementable solutions. We value people who can engage respectfully at all levels of an organisation, from operators, planners, engineers, and asset managers through to executives, boards, and regulators.
Depending on your experience and interests, the role may have a stronger focus on technical leadership, client delivery, business development, or a combination of these. While our preference is to appoint someone based in NSW, we are open to candidates in other locations where there is strong alignment of skills, experience, relationships, and cultural fit.
Key Responsibilities
In this role, you will lead and contribute to:
* Growing BetterAIM's water infrastructure planning and master planning work streams.
* Working alongside our Technical Directors to build and develop our infrastructure planning function.
* Providing senior technical and strategic advisory services across water, sewerage, and broader infrastructure markets.
* Lead and deliver water and sewer hydraulic modelling, hydraulic analysis, system performance assessment, and strategic infrastructure investigations.
* Developing larger system-based strategies, infrastructure master plans, servicing strategies, network plans, and management plans.
* Using hydraulic modelling outputs and engineering judgement to assess system constraints, capacity, performance, risk, growth impacts, renewal drivers, and future investment needs.
* Translating technical analysis into clear, practical, and implementable advice for clients.
* Supporting infrastructure planning, renewal planning, service planning, growth planning, capital planning, and long-term investment decision-making.
* Integrating asset management activities with long-term master planning, including asset performance, condition, criticality, lifecycle cost, renewal demand, service levels, risk, and capital investment requirements.
* Building trusted, long-term relationships with clients across water utilities, councils, government agencies, ports, power utilities, and other infrastructure-intensive organisations.
* Identifying, developing, and converting new business opportunities through a relationship-based approach to market engagement.
* Supporting the growth of our NSW business and broader national market presence.
* Representing BetterAIM through industry engagement, networking, conferences, forums, and client-facing events.
* Leading, mentoring, and developing team members, depending on the level of appointment.
Skills and Experience
Must have strong water infrastructure planning experience, technical credibility, practical judgement, commercial awareness, and client leadership capabilities.
Mandatory requirements
* Civil, environmental, water, or related engineering discipline with chartered professional engineer status.
* Significant practitioner experience in water and sewer infrastructure planning, master planning, hydraulic modelling, asset management, engineering consulting, utilities, or a related field.
* Strong water and sewer hydraulic modelling, hydraulic analysis, and network performance assessment experience using Bentley, Autodesk or other related software applications.
* Demonstrated ability to develop larger system-based infrastructure strategies, servicing strategies, network plans, master plans, and management plans.
* Practical water engineering experience, with the ability to provideproblem-solving advice at strategic, tactical and operational level grounded in real operating environments.
* Strong understanding of water and wastewater infrastructure, including system capacity, levels of service, growth, renewal, reliability, resilience, operational constraints, and capital investment planning.
* Strong understanding of how asset management activities integrate with long-term infrastructure master planning.
* Ability to grow infrastructure planning and master planning work streams while also delivering technically sound project outcomes.
* Proven business development ability and demonstrated experience building trusted client relationships through an authentic, respectful, and collaborative engagement style.
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to prepare clear, practical, and client-ready advice.
Additional highly valued experience
* Experience preparing or reviewing technical and strategic deliverables such as master plans, planning studies, asset management plans, business cases, options assessments, feasibility studies, maturity assessments, and improvement roadmaps aligned to industry standards and/or state and federal funding guidelines.
* Strong commercial understanding of organisations, operating environments, value drivers, and business challenges.
* Experience identifying client needs and developing opportunities to expand advisory services in a way that creates genuine value.
* Experience leading consulting engagements, managing stakeholders, coordinating delivery priorities, and resolving project issues.
* Strong analytical capability, including risk assessments, lifecycle cost analyses, options analyses, data interpretation, and performance improvement.
* Ability to work from strategic planning to tactical implementation and delivery.
* Existing networks across NSW water utilities, local government, state government, regulators, or related infrastructure sectors.
* Experience with ISO 55001, SAMPs, Asset Management Improvement Plans, Asset Information Strategies, maintenance management, asset classification frameworks, or infrastructure business cases.
* Experience using, interpreting, or reviewing outputs from infrastructure modelling tools, including hydraulic, wastewater, power, transport, or network planning models.
* Experience leading teams, mentoring others, and supporting capability development.
* Experience contributing to thought leadership, industry forums, professional networks, or market positioning initiatives.
Experience in advisory and infrastructure planning in the ports, local government, power utility, and/or transport sectors.
What Success Looks Like
* Growth in our water infrastructure planning and master planning services.
* Delivery of practical, evidence based, high-quality, technically sound advisory projects clients can implement.
* Strong client relationships and trusted advisor status.
* Sustainable growth in NSW client pipelines, projects and revenues.
* Integrated asset management, infrastructure planning, service planning, and long-term investment decision-making solutions.
* Developing team capability, and mentoring others.
* Industry leading intellectual property, methodologies, and advisory frameworks.
* Increased BetterAIM brand awareness.
What We Offer
* Flexible working arrangements.
* Full-time or part-time options.
* A senior opportunity that can be shaped around your strengths.
* The ability to work with a collaborative and experienced team focused on client and community outcomes.
* Exposure to diverse clients, sectors, and infrastructure challenges.
* Professional development and career progression.
How to Apply
If you are passionate about this opportunity, we would like to hear from you. Please submit your resume and a brief cover letter via LinkedIn or email to: admin@betteraim.com.au, or reach out to a member of the BetterAIM team for a confidential conversation.
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