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Cadence OneFive° Handbook

Mechanical Engineer

Regardless of level, the primary responsibilities of mechanical engineers are:

Responsibilities

Section titled “Responsibilities”

Building Science & Research

Section titled “Building Science & Research”
  • Conduct building science research with an emphasis on formulation of questions to inform product design in the mid to long term
  • Work with the data science/data engineering folks to adapt building science approaches and models to data-driven approaches backed by a modern data pipeline
  • Ensure that recommendations created using our tools are technically sound and will speed building decarbonization in existing buildings
  • Incorporate climate justice into building science practice

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Section titled “Cross-Functional Collaboration”
  • With the marketing and content folks, translate science insights into effective context-aware end-user education
  • Interface with customers in a support or leadership role and translate customer requests into potential software features
  • Clearly articulate scope of accountability in work plans
  • Wear multiple hats as necessary - data quality assurance and scientific analysis may make up a significant portion of the workload

Levels

Section titled “Levels”
  • Principal Mechanical Engineer (Senior) - generally take leadership roles in making meaningful directional decisions
  • Mechanical Engineer

Top 5 Competencies

Section titled “Top 5 Competencies”

This role combines Manager of One competencies with:

Additional Domain Expertise

Section titled “Additional Domain Expertise”

  • Open-minded Pragmatist

    • Sound judgment on what analysis frameworks and technologies are constructive to leverage in order to meet deeper decarbonization goals and which ones are necessary to cast aside.
    • A deep enough appreciation of complexity in order to most effectively identify sufficiently simplified decarbonization approaches.

  • Systems Thinker

    • An understanding of the interconnections between building infrastructure elements as well as marketplace participants that impact how this infrastructure is maintained and replaced.
    • An understanding of how the behavior of any system follows from its design and therefore why realizing different behavior requires system redesign.

  • Decarbonization Mechanics

    • Deep familiarity with the real world performance of HVAC, building envelopes and building operations that impact energy use and carbon emissions.
    • Appreciation for the relative strengths of different decarbonization technologies in different applications.

  • Technical Polyglot

    • Communication in the languages of building science, data science, software engineering and non-technical language to share information with and learn from a diverse group of collaborators.
    • An ability to contribute to software development by reviewing and potentially writing code for data analysis and calculation methodologies.

  • 360-degree leadership

    • Comfortable leading others to solutions
    • Comfortable asking for and giving help

Requirements

Section titled “Requirements”

  1. Minimum 5 years or 10 years (Principal) of experience scoping, analyzing and/or commissioning retrofit upgrades in existing multifamily and commercial buildings including:

    1. Benchmarking
    2. Energy auditing and retro-commissioning
    3. Decarbonization feasibility studies
    4. Retrofit project implementation services
    5. Building systems data analysis

  2. 1-5 years experience leading or contributing to building science research projects and/or technical guideline development around building performance to support policymakers and program administrators.

  3. Proficiency with some programming language used for software development or data analysis, and a willingness to learn new languages. Examples include: SQL, R, PHP, Python.