Water & Wastewater Recruiter
San Francisco, CA
SFPUC's $8+ billion Sewer System Improvement Program, the largest infrastructure investment in the city's history, is rebuilding the Southeast Treatment Plant's digesters and hardening the system against sea-level rise and seismic risk.
Specialized staffing for San Francisco water infrastructure
Metro Associates is a leading water and wastewater engineering recruiter providing specialized staffing solutions across San Francisco and the Bay Area. We help firms and utilities hire licensed Professional Engineers (PE), process engineers, and construction inspection specialists across treatment, distribution, and collection-system disciplines, for projects reviewed under San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and beyond.
Locally, that has included work like sewer system improvement program (ssip) digester rebuild. We match vetted talent to the regulatory, operational, and performance demands of that kind of water infrastructure program.
2026 San Franciscowater & wastewater hiring
Heading into 2026, San Francisco's market is shaped by aging-infrastructure replacement, PFAS and emerging-contaminant compliance, and federally funded resiliency work. Licensed process engineers and inspection specialists who can deliver permit-compliant, resilient systems remain in short supply.
Pay for these roles moves with local cost of labor and project mix, so we publish ranges nationally rather than implying a San Francisco-specific figure we have not measured. See the national water & wastewater compensation ranges, or ask us what we are seeing in San Francisco right now.
Supporting San Franciscowater & wastewater programs
What water and wastewater engineering in San Francisco actually involves
The regional water system delivers Sierra snowmelt to the Bay Area largely by gravity, and the pipelines and tunnels carrying it cross active faults on their way. That has driven a sustained seismic improvement program aimed at restoring service within days of a major earthquake, built around fault crossings, alternative routing, storage and hardened facilities. It is an unusual engineering brief and the people who have worked on it are few.
San Francisco also runs a combined sewer system, which is rare on the west coast, so wet weather storage, transport boxes and treatment capacity work the way they do in an eastern city rather than a Californian one. Both wastewater treatment plants sit at the waterfront and are being rebuilt with sea level rise in the design basis, which links the coastal and process engineering problems directly.
Who owns the systems
The utilities and districts that own most San Francisco water and wastewater assets. Experience on their programs is the shorthand hiring managers here read first.
- San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
- State Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water
- Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency
- San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board
- California Department of Water Resources
- US Bureau of Reclamation
Hardest San Francisco roles to fill
Where demand in this metro runs ahead of supply, and the local reason why, which is usually a feature of the work itself rather than of the job market.
Seismic resilience engineers for pipelines & tunnels
A gravity supply crossing active faults has driven a rare, sustained survivability program.
Combined sewer & wet weather engineers
A combined system is unusual in the west and requires storage and transport expertise most local engineers lack.
Treatment process engineers
Both waterfront plants are being rebuilt, concentrating process design and commissioning demand.
Coastal & sea level adaptation engineers
Waterfront treatment facilities are being designed against rising water as a stated basis of design.
Licensure & operator credentials in California
California licenses through the Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors and Geologists and does not grant straightforward comity, so an out-of-state PE must satisfy California-specific examination requirements. Treatment and distribution operators are certified separately by the State Water Resources Control Board by grade, and the regional water quality control board administers discharge permitting that shapes process design.
What else is being built in San Francisco
Our other practices are working the same metro. The programs below are what they are staffing in San Francisco right now, useful context if your project sits across more than one discipline, which most of them do.
- Caltrans District 4 highway & bridge programs
- BART core-capacity and transit expansion
- Seismic retrofit of bridges and structures
- Tech-headquarters campus mechanical & electrical
- Life-science and lab-space build-outs (UCSF)
- High-rise commercial and mixed-use systems
- Central Subway extension inspection
- Bay Bridge seismic retrofit oversight
- BART extension resident engineering
- Sewer System Improvement Program capital projects
- Vision Zero complete streets implementation
- Site plan review for dense urban infill
Water & wastewater recruiting in San Francisco, FAQ
Do you place water and wastewater engineers in San Francisco, CA?
Yes. Metro Associates is a specialized water and wastewater engineering recruiter serving San Francisco and the Bay Area, placing licensed PEs, process engineers, and construction inspection specialists on treatment, distribution, and collection-system programs.
What water/wastewater roles do you recruit for in San Francisco?
Typical San Francisco searches include Water/Wastewater Project Engineer (PE), Senior Process Engineer, Water Resources Engineer, Utility/Pipeline Design Engineer, and SCADA/Controls Engineer.
How quickly can you fill a water/wastewater position in San Francisco?
With a national pipeline of pre-vetted water and wastewater professionals, we typically deliver a shortlist of qualified CA candidates within days of the brief.
Do you recruit for NPDES permitting and utility compliance work?
Yes. Candidates are screened for NPDES permitting, SCADA/instrumentation, and utility rehabilitation experience, matched against San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and California's regulatory requirements.
Hiring water & wastewater engineers in San Francisco?
Tell us about the role. We'll deliver a vetted shortlist of licensed CA water and wastewater talent, screened against California licensure requirements.
Water & wastewater recruiting across the Pacific West
Other engineering disciplines in San Francisco