Civil Engineer

About the role

Location: Austin, TX

Type: Full-time

Compensation

$90,000 - $180,000 annually

Company: sanctuary.co

If you’ve spent your career in environments where everything is already figured out - established civil standards, tidy workflows, and predictable processes - you won’t find that here.

We’re early, messy, and building as we go.

And that’s why this role matters.

If chaos excites you more than it scares you, if land speaks to you, and if you want to shape both the work and the way the work gets done…

Then keep reading….

What This Role Really Means

For too long, we’ve relied on outside consultants for grading, drainage, and site layout - and frankly, it slowed us down and diluted the beauty of what we’re building.

We’re bringing this role in-house because we need someone who sees land as a canvas, not a constraint.

You will literally shape how the community feels underfoot

• Roads that follow the land instead of fighting it
• Homes tucked gracefully into natural contours
• Stormwater systems that follow the logic of nature

This is a rare chance to blend engineering, architecture, sustainability, and design into one high-impact role.

Your Impact Will Show Up Everywhere

Your work determines

• Pace: How fast we can build.
• Aesthetics: How beautifully each home sits within the land.
• Sustainability: How thoughtfully we work with nature (designing roads that follow terrain, and stormwater paths that work with natural systems).

Additional information

You will be the bridge between vision and reality - the person who turns world-class architecture into something constructible, intelligent, and deeply respectful of the Hill Country terrain.

What You’ll Own (End-to-end)

You will lead civil engineering for our entire community - full stop.

This includes: Site & Land Development

• Full-site grading, drainage, roadway layout, and retaining design
• Creating grading that makes every home feel naturally placed
• Topography-driven design that minimizes cuts, scars, and cost

Prepare and submit permit-ready civil drawing sets for

• TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality)
• Hays County
• City of Dripping Springs
• And own the entire permitting process end-to-end.

Cross-functional Design Leadership

• Work closely with global architects, designers, and MEP teams
• Collaborate daily with construction in Austin to ensure buildability
• Guide design decisions using deep knowledge of Texas codes/standards

Technical Execution

• Translate geotechnical & survey data into actionable plans
• Develop drainage models, stormwater paths, and cut-fill strategies
• Coordinate civil work packages: roads, driveways, water/sewer, utilities
• Review consultant work and integrate it into Sanctuary standards

Systems & Standards

• Build the foundation of Sanctuary’s civil engineering processes
• Create templates, workflows, and documentation that scale to future communities

This is a role for someone who loves rolling up their sleeves, running models, walking the land, and making decisions that will shape a community for decades.

What You Bring

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering (Master’s preferred but not required)

Experience

• 6-10 years in site/civil design, grading, or land development
• Residential, mixed-use, or master-planned community experience is a plus

Technical Strength

• Grading design, stormwater management, drainage modeling
• Road layouts, utility corridors, cut-fill optimization
• Revit + AutoCAD Civil 3D (or equivalent tools)

This matters more than anything else. You are someone who

• Thinks with both logic and imagination
• Designs for beauty and practicality
• Loves land, water, slope, and the challenge of making them work together
• Thrives in ambiguity and early-stage building
• Wants your engineering to actually mean something

Civil engineers rarely get to work this close to

• Architectural vision
• Environmental conservation
• Holistic community design
• A founding team shaping an entirely new way of living

• At Sanctuary, your work won’t disappear into a giant firm’s folder structure.
• Your decisions will shape the roads people walk, the views they wake up to, the water that runs through the land, and the experience of a community designed to make life feel better.
• This is engineering with meaning.
• Engineering with heart.
• Engineering that cares about people and the planet.
• If you’re the kind of engineer who wants to build more than infrastructure…
• If you want to build a new way of living, we’d love to meet you!