Senior Coastal Engineer

Environmental Science Associates (ESA) is a 100% employee‑owned environmental consulting firm that plans, designs, permits, mitigates, and restores projects across communities, infrastructure systems, open spaces, and wildlands. With 50 years of experience and 21 offices in California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southeast United States, we offer a dynamic environment for environmental professionals.

ESA seeks a Senior Coastal Engineer to lead the coastal engineering and resilience practice across California and beyond. This leadership role focuses on coastal hazards analysis, adaptation planning, and implementation, delivering high‑impact solutions for shoreline communities.

• You are a professionally licensed engineer with 15+ years of experience leading coastal engineering projects, including expertise in nature‑based solutions, coastal resilience planning, coastal hazards analysis (waves, runup, erosion, and flooding) as well as flood management along the U.S. Pacific Coast.
• You have led and managed complex coastal engineering projects from concept through construction, including coastal hazards and vulnerability assessments, engineering evaluations, erosion/flooding studies, technical reports, design plan sets, specifications, cost estimates (PS&E packages), construction schedules, and/or construction support.
• You are adept in the engineering steps required to move projects from concept to construction bid package, including coordination with multidisciplinary teams such as geotechnical, structural, and hydraulic engineers, coastal planners, and landscape architects.
• You have provided senior engineer review and oversight on large‑scale coastal engineering projects, with emphasis on Living Shorelines, nature‑based solutions and multi‑benefit flood and erosion protection, and have experience integrating coastal engineering with planning, economics, and resilience strategy development.
• You have led, managed, mentored, and/or supervised multi‑disciplinary design and engineering teams including delegating and guiding engineers through simple to complex tasks. You are an effective communicator who fosters teamwork and inclusion, and shares knowledge and expertise with more junior staff through mentoring and direct supervision.
• You have a Bachelor’s degree or higher in coastal engineering or a closely related discipline and a Professional Engineers license in California, Washington, and/or Oregon.

• As a senior leader, contribute to annual and long‑term strategic planning for our coastal engineering and coastal resilience practice. Cultivate best practices, facilitate knowledge sharing and technical training, mentor and manage more junior staff, develop and oversee implementation of engineering QA/QC protocols specific to coastal engineering and analysis, help manage workflow and workplans, and make staffing and recruitment recommendations.
• Identify opportunities, track markets and clients and lead strategy to link and leverage resilience/sea‑level rise planning with ESA’s coastal sciences and engineering expertise.
• Leverage ESA’s multi‑disciplinary practices across regions to help connect, integrate, drive and expand our teams’ demonstrated capabilities in coastal hazards analysis, coastal resilience planning, and sea‑level rise adaptation firm‑wide.
• Collaborate with other engineers, coastal planners, hydrologists, geomorphologists, landscape architects, ecologists, biologists, economists, and other specialists in advancing coastal engineering, resilience planning and habitat restoration approaches and other project solutions from concept to implementation.
• Help plan, design and/or manage a wide array of important, challenging and exciting projects – leading efforts from coastal risk assessment through implementation – including coastal hazards assessments (wave runup, flooding, erosion), sea‑level rise vulnerability analyses, adaptation planning, Living Shorelines design, ecosystem restoration, climate change resilience/sea‑level rise adaptation, fisheries habitat enhancement, and engineering with nature.
• Thrive in a fast‑paced, challenging environment and be able to…