What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Mechanical Engineer - Controlled Environments position at Progressive Companies?
As a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Progressive Companies, you will lead design strategies for controlled environments such as cleanrooms, laboratories, and mission-critical spaces. You will mentor teams and develop advanced mechanical systems with an emphasis on performance, precision, sustainability, and regulatory compliance. You will collaborate across disciplines and markets to shape environments that support human health, technology, and innovation.
Deliver Results
Each individual’s background, knowledge, ability, and experience contributes to strengthening our organization and projects. Our dedication to diversity includes company provided training and education, equitable recruitment, a grassroots employee DEI committee, and robust community partnerships.
Progressive Companies is comprised of people with a variety of abilities, races, colors, religions, genders, sexual orientations, national origins, ages, veteran statuses, and more. As an equal opportunity employer, we believe diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential elements of innovative design. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform essential job functions.
Transforming Spaces. Empowering People.
The talented professionals of Progressive Companies are designers of a bold new future, creating high-performance structures and pathways, delivering on today’s needs and preparing for what’s to come. We live by the idea that design isn’t simply about beauty, it’s about improving strategic outcomes—what we call Performance Based Design. Our work spans across the nation, allowing team members to work on a variety of exciting projects and maximize impact as trusted partners to our clients and communities.
Sustainable and Inclusive
We are dedicated to human-centered, sustainable, and inclusive design practices. We believe diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to building trust, respect, and truly innovative design making spaces welcoming and accessible to all. Our sustainability approach embraces the AIA 2030 Commitment, together with a range of high performance, restorative, and regenerative strategies with a focus on climate responsive results to maximize positive impact in our industry.
Employee Owned
We act like owners—because we are. From modest beginnings of four original engineering partners in 1962, to almost 300 architects, engineers, designers, and consultants across multiple regional offices today, the energy, resourcefulness, and entrepreneurial mindset you expect from a CEO come standard with every team member.
Culture of Excellence
The firm is continually ranked as one of the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in the Nation®, with comprehensive benefits including an award-winning wellness program, hybrid work schedule, summer hours, profit-sharing, and employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). We take our work seriously, but have fun along the way, which fuels the creative spirit and supports a focus on work and life integration.
Progressive Companies is committed to development and growth of team members through continuing education, mentorship, growth opportunities, and more. We are dedicated to giving back to our communities, with paid service-learning hours available to every employee and corporate sponsorship for a wide range of community organizations and activities.
Deliver Results
- Lead mechanical engineering design for complex projects with advanced environmental control needs, including cGMP-regulated facilities and ISO-certified spaces.
- Develop custom mechanical and utility systems leveraging expertise in psychrometrics, temperature/pressure/humidity control, dehumidification, high-efficiency filtration, and specialty gas/water/process piping.
- Oversee conceptualization and development of cutting-edge HVAC, energy, and mechanical systems, incorporating emerging technologies and smart controls.
- Conduct comprehensive energy modeling and performance simulations to guide design decisions and promote energy efficiency and regenerative principles.
- Write detailed control sequences, control diagrams, system scopes, custom specifications, and performance-based design objectives.
- Guide Revit modeling best practices, including sloped sanitary/process piping design, elevation coordination, branch tie-ins, and inheritance functions for accurate modeling.
- Coordinate with clients, contractors, cross-functional teams, and stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle to ensure design goals are met, risks are minimized, and innovative strategies are translated effectively.
- Mentor junior staff, lead technical reviews of critical deliverables for accuracy and compliance, and provide expert feedback that adds value.
- Serve as Subject Matter Expert (SME) in controlled environments, for highly complex and innovative designs.
- Facilitate field inspections of major projects and lead "Lessons Learned" sessions to align construction with design intent and enhance team skills and project outcomes.
- Contribute to firm-wide innovation by evaluating new technologies, sharing knowledge, and recommending improvements based on field and industry experience.
- Extensive knowledge of mechanical system technologies, including current and anticipated future advances in controlled environments.
- Deep understanding and application of psychrometric charts for humidity/dewpoint control and dehumidification system sizing.
- Practical sizing criteria for ductwork and piping (e.g., pressure drop and velocity guidelines) based on experience rather than software defaults.
- Design for redundancy, mission-critical reliability, and high-performance filtration/utility systems.
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering (or related field).
- Licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.).
- Approximately 10 or more years of post-graduation professional engineering experience.
- Ability to navigate in Revit and AutoCAD for advanced modeling and documentation standards.
- Demonstrated experience with psychrometric analysis, dehumidification control, redundancy planning, and mechanical systems in mission-critical or regulated facilities.
- Direct design experience in controlled environments such as biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medtech (medical devices), sterile manufacturing, semiconductor, battery, aerospace, or mission-critical/data centers (strongly preferred).
- Experience writing design fee estimates, technical specifications, and control diagrams.
- Familiarity with pressure drop/velocity criteria for duct/piping sizing and sanitary piping modeling challenges (e.g., sloping and branch integration).
- Client-facing experience translating requirements into project plans and fostering strong relationships.
Each individual’s background, knowledge, ability, and experience contributes to strengthening our organization and projects. Our dedication to diversity includes company provided training and education, equitable recruitment, a grassroots employee DEI committee, and robust community partnerships.
Progressive Companies is comprised of people with a variety of abilities, races, colors, religions, genders, sexual orientations, national origins, ages, veteran statuses, and more. As an equal opportunity employer, we believe diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential elements of innovative design. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform essential job functions.
Transforming Spaces. Empowering People.
The talented professionals of Progressive Companies are designers of a bold new future, creating high-performance structures and pathways, delivering on today’s needs and preparing for what’s to come. We live by the idea that design isn’t simply about beauty, it’s about improving strategic outcomes—what we call Performance Based Design. Our work spans across the nation, allowing team members to work on a variety of exciting projects and maximize impact as trusted partners to our clients and communities.
Sustainable and Inclusive
We are dedicated to human-centered, sustainable, and inclusive design practices. We believe diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to building trust, respect, and truly innovative design making spaces welcoming and accessible to all. Our sustainability approach embraces the AIA 2030 Commitment, together with a range of high performance, restorative, and regenerative strategies with a focus on climate responsive results to maximize positive impact in our industry.
Employee Owned
We act like owners—because we are. From modest beginnings of four original engineering partners in 1962, to almost 300 architects, engineers, designers, and consultants across multiple regional offices today, the energy, resourcefulness, and entrepreneurial mindset you expect from a CEO come standard with every team member.
Culture of Excellence
The firm is continually ranked as one of the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in the Nation®, with comprehensive benefits including an award-winning wellness program, hybrid work schedule, summer hours, profit-sharing, and employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). We take our work seriously, but have fun along the way, which fuels the creative spirit and supports a focus on work and life integration.
Progressive Companies is committed to development and growth of team members through continuing education, mentorship, growth opportunities, and more. We are dedicated to giving back to our communities, with paid service-learning hours available to every employee and corporate sponsorship for a wide range of community organizations and activities.