You already know the right call. You're just not the one allowed to make it.

Seven years in, you can scope the job, sanity-check the design, and tell a client exactly what will and won't get through council. But it still goes up the line. Someone in another office signs it off, adds nothing to it, and takes a week doing it.

That's the part that wears senior engineers down. Not the work. The waiting.

And if you're on the Coast, there's usually a second version of the same problem. Your office is a branch. The real portfolio sits in Brisbane, and you get handed the bits of it nobody down there wanted.

Seven desks, and room for four more

This Sunshine Coast team runs its own regional portfolio. It isn't feeding work to another office, and it isn't waiting to be fed either. Seven people are there now, and the floor space has just been expanded to take another four desks, because the Coast keeps getting busier. A traffic engineer is being recruited alongside you. This is a growth seat, not a backfill.

The business behind it is employee-owned. Somewhere between 35 and 40 percent of staff hold shares, and the pathway to getting there is defined rather than hinted at. Managers describe it as running a business within a business, and they mean the decision-making part - you're expected to make the call, not ask for one. Circa 130 people. Urban and infrastructure divisions, with traffic, environmental and water sitting as specialist teams you can pull on when a project needs them.

Hybrid and remote working from day one. Not unlocked after probation, not earned.



Trust extended up front.

They also recruit for personality, and they actually hold that line. A technically strong candidate was recently knocked back on personality, based on feedback from a former colleague. If you're used to being the biggest ego in the room and getting away with it because your design work is valuable, this won't go your way.

The 12D thing, up front

Design is done in 12D. Only 12D. There's no Civil 3D in the business and no plan to bring it in. If you've built your career in Civil 3D and have no interest in changing that, this isn't your role, and it's better you know now.

What the job comes down to is ownership. Your own projects, run without supervision. Your own client conversations. Your own dealings with the authorities. Your own workload, managed by you. Roughly an even split between urban development and infrastructure, reporting straight to the Sunshine Coast manager. RPEQ isn't a filter here. What matters is whether you can be trusted to run the job end-to-end.

The rest of it: annual reviews with off-cycle increases where they're warranted, two profit-dependent bonuses a year of around a week's pay each, and a weekly meeting of all representatives to work through how the business can do things better.

Two conversations and a start date

First with the Sunshine Coast manager. Second with one of three senior people from Brisbane. They're ready to move now.

Salary is negotiable on experience, so tell me what you're on and what would make the move worth making.

#J-18808-Ljbffr

📌 Senior Civil Engineer (Sunshine)
🏢 Anjuna People
📍 Sunshine