Together We Build – Partnership, Innovation, Excellence, and Safety

At Kelso Industries, 5,000+ employees across 40+ companies work together to deliver exceptional HVAC, mechanical, plumbing, refrigeration, and electrical solutions nationwide. Join us to grow your career, make an impact, and be part of a team where innovation, excellence, and safety come first.

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Lead Engineer

About NDBS

National Design Build Services (NDBS) is a mechanical design/build firm based in St. Louis, MO. We design and deliver HVAC, refrigeration and process systems for commercial, industrial and mission-critical facilities, including data centers, food processing, manufacturing and refrigerated warehouses. NDBS is part of the Kelso Industries family of MEP+ companies, which shares the core values of Partnership, Innovation, Excellence and Safety. We take projects from design through fabrication and field installation, using off-site prefabrication partners where it improves schedule, quality and job-site safety. NDBS offers an excellent benefits and compensation program and strong career development opportunities.

Position Description

The Lead Engineer leads mechanical design for data centers, mission-critical facilities and large industrial plants delivered through design-build and design-assist. You will turn owner and process requirements into reliable HVAC, process and piping systems, carry them from concept through milestone reviews to issued-for-construction documents, and support construction through submittals, RFIs and commissioning. Where it adds value, you will work with fabrication partners to aide in the prefabrication of piping and equipment assemblies. You will work with preconstruction, general contractors, trade partners, sub-consultants and field operations, leading a team of engineers or working on your own, and you are responsible for delivering design assignments on time and on budget while meeting client contracts.

Position Information

Position Type: Full Time

Travel Required: 20%

Department: Engineering

Reporting: Director of Engineering

Direct Reports: Yes

Location: St. Louis, MO 63146 OR Remote, United States

Skills & Responsibilities (including but not limited to)

Adhering to NDBS Core Values
Safety
We Answer Our Phones
Always Innovating
Collaborative Partnerships
Reputation
Entrepreneurship
Engineering Deliverable Management:
Own the complete engineering deliverable, from basis of design and P&IDs through milestone design reviews, issued-for-construction (IFC) drawings and turnover documents.
Manage and/or coordinate multidisciplinary scope across mechanical, plumbing, structural, electrical, civil and controls.
Manage engineering scope, fees and budgets: prepare design services proposals, track engineering hours against budget, and price engineering change orders.
Work with controls partners on PLC logic, Building Management Systems and sequences of operation.
Run client and design coordination meetings, work through review comments, answer RFIs, and keep deliverable and submittal trackers current.
Mission-Critical Design:
Lead mechanical design for data center cooling systems: chilled water plants, air- and water-cooled chillers, CRAH/CRAC units and fan walls, economizers, and hot/cold aisle containment.
Design liquid cooling infrastructure for high-density and AI workloads: coolant distribution units (CDUs), technology cooling system (TCS) and facility water loops, and rear-door and direct-to-chip heat removal.
Apply redundancy and reliability concepts (N, N+1, 2N, concurrent maintainability, fault tolerance) to meet the owner's basis of design and Uptime Institute tier objectives.
Perform heat load, hydraulic and psychrometric calculations, and support energy and PUE/WUE analysis.
Industrial and Process Design:
Design HVAC and process systems for large manufacturing facilities, including process exhaust, compressed air, boiler and hot water plants, and chilled water plants.