WHO WE ARE

BUCS Engineering is a civil engineering firm built on a single conviction: infrastructure deserves to be done right. We design underground utility systems, fiber optic networks, utility relocations, and site/civil improvements across the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. Our clients include major carriers, cable operators, private developers, and municipalities who rely on us to move fast, communicate clearly, and set the standard.

We are small on purpose. Lean by design. And serious about craft in a way that most firms in this space are not. Our vision is simple: Let's Set the Standard. Not meet it. Not race to the bottom chasing "good enough." Define it. Every plan, every detail, every deliverable should reflect the highest quality in the industry. That's not a slogan. It's how we work.

This hire is a big one. We are looking for someone who shares that conviction.

THE ROLE

The Senior Civil Designer at BUCS is two things at once: a highly skilled production designer who carries real workload, and the person responsible for building the CAD infrastructure that makes the entire team faster and better. You will design. You will also build the tools, standards, and templates that ensure every designer on the team including outside vendors produces work that looks and performs the way we expect.

This role is for someone who comes from wet utilities, land development, or transportation design, the disciplines where precision is non-negotiable and the field consequences of a bad drawing are real. If your background is dry utility or telecom design, we will consider you but you will need to demonstrate technical depth and engineering capabilities. We are not lowering the bar. We are building a team that raises it.

PLAN AESTHETICS & DRAWING CRAFT

This section matters as much as anything else on this page. Read it carefully.

Our plans look different from almost everything else in this space. We have deliberately built a visual identity around the hand-lettered feel of an old-school drafter's pencil work, translated into a modern CAD environment. Every choice, annotation, linework, layout, is intentional. The result is plans that look like they were made by someone who actually cared about making them. Because they were.

We want that to be the identity of every drawing that leaves this firm. Clean linework. Intentional layout. Thoughtful annotation. The kind of plan that a PE, a permit reviewer, or a construction crew picks up and immediately trusts because it looks like the person who drew it knew exactly what they were doing.

This is not about decoration. It is about craft. The best civil drafters in history understood that a well-composed drawing communicates confidence, precision, and care. We want that tradition alive in our work with a modern sensibility where it adds value, not clutter.

What We Are Looking For:

- Genuine appreciation for old-school drafting discipline, you understand why hand-lettering conventions, linetype hierarchy, and clean sheet composition matter

- An eye for layout: title blocks, north arrows, legends, scale bars, and callouts placed with intention, not dropped wherever they fit

- Awareness of linetype weight hierarchy, how to distinguish existing vs. proposed, primary vs. secondary, underground vs. surface using line weights and styles rather than color alone

- Experience with or strong appreciation for hand-drafting traditions translated into CAD, you know what a well-composed plan looks like before you open AutoCAD

- The ability to make a plan sheet that stands on its own as a professional document, not just a data dump

- Willingness to define and champion drawing presentation standards across the team and enforce them on vendor submittals

DESIGN RESPONSIBILITIES

Utility Design:

- Design plan and profile drawings for underground utilities in public rights-of-way including water, sewer, gas, electric, and telecommunications systems

- Produce complete utility relocation packages driven by roadway, transit, or development conflicts

- Develop new utility designs from existing records, field surveys, GIS data, and client scope

- Read, interpret, and extract design-relevant information from existing utility record drawings across all major utility disciplines

Land Development & Site Civil:

- Design grading plans, earthwork, cut/fill analysis, and finished grade layouts for site development projects

- Produce erosion and sediment control (ESC) plans compliant with state and local regulations across the Mid-Atlantic

- Design stormwater management (SWM) systems including conveyance, detention, and infiltration features

- Develop site development drawings including layout, paving, curb, and drainage details

Plan Production & Interpretation:

- Produce and interpret plan and profile sheets, roadway plans, traffic control plans, and site civil packages

- Read and apply metes and bounds descriptions, record plats, deed descriptions, and right-of-way plats from public land records

- Interpret survey data including control points, coordinate systems, benchmarks, and surface models received from field crews

- Work fluently in real-world coordinate systems, understand state plane, geographic coordinates, and project-defined systems and know when each applies

CAD STANDARDS & SYSTEMS LEADERSHIP

This is where you separate yourself. Anyone can use AutoCAD. We are looking for someone who builds for it, and who understands that a well-designed CAD environment is itself a form of craftsmanship.

Standards Architecture:

- Create and maintain company AutoCAD standards including layer management files (.lyr), drawing standards files, CTB/STB plot style tables, and drawing template files (.dwt)

- Define and enforce linestyle (.lin), textstyle (including the firm's hand-lettering annotation font), and dimension style standards across all project types

- Build and document the correct model space vs. paper space workflow for a utilities engineering environment, viewport setup, annotation scaling, and sheet layout done right

- Build and manage external reference (xref) protocols and file structure standards that allow multiple designers to work cleanly on shared drawing sets

- Own the drawing presentation standard, linework hierarchy, font usage, title block layout, callout conventions, and sheet composition across all project types

Automation & Productivity:

- Write and maintain AutoLISP routines that automate repetitive drawing tasks and enforce standards, reducing per-drawing time for every designer on the team

- Build and maintain pull-down and drop-down custom menus and workspaces that surface the right tools for utilities design workflows

- Identify productivity bottlenecks in the design workflow and propose LISP or macro-based solutions proactively, not reactively

Training & Documentation:

- Author SOPs covering AutoCAD environment setup, drawing organization, naming conventions, model/paper space workflow, and quality control procedures

- Create tiered guidance materials, clear enough for a junior designer, specific enough to control output from outside vendors

- Set and enforce CAD and drawing presentation standards for subconsultants; review vendor submittals for conformance before internal acceptance

GIS & SPATIAL DATA

- Import GIS data (shapefiles, geodatabases, KML, GeoJSON) into AutoCAD Civil 3D for use as base mapping and design reference

- Export completed design geometry back to GIS-compatible formats for client deliverables, permitting submittals, or asset records

- Understand coordinate reference systems and datum transformations sufficiently to ensure design geometry aligns correctly with real-world GIS data

- Navigate and extract useful data from online GIS portals, county GeoHubs, and public parcel and utility databases

QUALIFICATIONS

Required:

- 8+ years of AutoCAD Civil 3D experience in a production engineering environment

- Primary design experience in wet utilities (water, sewer, stormwater), land development, transportation, or utility relocation

- Demonstrated ability to create and maintain CAD standards, templates, and LISP routines, not just use them

- A genuine eye for plan composition and drawing aesthetics, you care how a plan looks, not just what it says

- Working knowledge of surveying outputs: control reports, surface files, legal descriptions, and coordinate geometry

- Proficiency reading and applying right-of-way plats, metes and bounds descriptions, deed plats, and land records

- Experience across the Mid-Atlantic regulatory environment (Maryland, DC, Virginia, and neighboring jurisdictions)

- Clear understanding of model space vs. paper space workflow, viewport annotation scaling, and xref management

Preferred:

- Experience with erosion and sediment control and stormwater management design in MD/VA/DC jurisdictions

- Background in traffic control plan production

- Experience with ESRI ArcGIS, QGIS, or similar GIS platforms in a production workflow

- Familiarity with permit submission requirements across Mid-Atlantic highway, county, and municipal jurisdictions

- Appreciation for or experience with hand-lettering-style annotation fonts in a production CAD environment

- Associate or bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering Technology, Drafting, or a related field

WHAT MAKES YOU STAND OUT

The technical skills above get you to the table. What we are really looking for is a specific kind of person.

You have been in rooms where someone said "good enough" and it genuinely bothered you. You have cleaned up someone else's xref mess and taken notes on how to prevent it. You have written a LISP routine not because it was required but because it was obvious. You have strong opinions about layer naming and font selection and you can defend them. You look at a plan sheet and see immediately what is working and what is not. Not just technically, but compositionally.

You respect the old-school drafters. You understand why hand-lettered plans looked the way they did. You have tried to carry that discipline forward into a modern CAD environment, not as nostalgia, but because those principles still produce better work.

Our core business is telecom infrastructure design. What you bring from water, sewer, roads, or site civil translates directly, the technical depth, the precision, the ability to read a real situation into a plan. The learning curve on the telecom side is short for the right person. We want someone who adapts fast and raises the standard on day one.

We aim to define expectations, not meet them. Every plan we produce should reflect the highest quality in the industry. If that is not how you think about your work, this is not the right seat.

WHAT WE OFFER

- $85,000 - $100,000 annual compensation, commensurate with experience

- Fully remote position with flexibility built in

- Real influence over how the firm builds its standards and tooling, you will not inherit a system, you will build one

- Project variety: telecom infrastructure, utility relocation, site civil, public right-of-way design, and more

- A lean team where your work is visible, your contributions are credited, and quality is highly valued

- A firm with a clear mission, clear values, and a culture built on doing things the right way

To apply, submit your resume and a brief description of your CAD standards experience. Portfolios, sample plan sheets, LISP routines, drawing templates, or other work product are welcome and encouraged. Show us what you care about.

BUCS Engineering is an equal opportunity employer.

Pay: $85,000.00 - $100,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Happy hour
• Health insurance
• Paid time off
• Professional development assistance
• Vision insurance

Work Location: Remote