Role Overview: 

Orbitworks is seeking a Senior Project Engineer to lead the delivery of facility expansion and infrastructure projects supporting the growth of our satellite manufacturing and operations capabilities. As part of the Facilities & Maintenance team, you’ll turn business and operational requirements into completed, commissioned, and usable facilities — including cleanrooms, production and technical spaces, offices, and the building services and utilities that support them. You’ll own delivery from requirements definition and technical scoping through contractor selection, construction, commissioning, and handover.

You’ll work autonomously across internal teams and external contractors, anticipating constraints and resolving technical and commercial issues while keeping schedule, cost, quality, and safety under control. A central part of the role is executing construction work within an occupied, operating facility — without disrupting production, testing, or other business activities.

The role also carries a practical EHS remit: working directly with employees and contractors to identify hazards, implement effective controls, investigate incidents and near misses, and build stronger safe-working practices across the site.

What You'll Do

• Capture requirements from Facilities, Operations, AIT, Engineering, IT, Security, Quality and other stakeholders, and translate them into defined scope, technical specifications, interfaces, and acceptance criteria.
• Coordinate architectural, civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and cleanroom-specific interfaces; review designs for constructability, maintainability, and operational suitability.
• Develop and maintain an integrated schedule covering design, approvals, procurement, construction, commissioning, and occupancy, with credible recovery plans when milestones are at risk.
• Prepare scopes of work and bid evaluations with Procurement; manage contractors and consultants through to completion, resolving deficiencies and holding them to commitments.
• Own budget and commercial control — estimates, commitments, actual spend, contingency, variations, and forecast cost to complete.
• Plan construction segregation, access, noise/vibration and contamination controls, and coordinate service isolations and shutdowns to protect ongoing operations.
• Coordinate cleanroom and utility delivery — cleanliness classification, airflow, pressure, temperature, humidity, contamination controls — verified through agreed testing and acceptance criteria.
• Track local authority, landlord, utility, fire/life-safety, and EHS approvals, maintaining the approvals register through to sign-off.
• Define and enforce construction quality: inspections, hold points, defect tracking, and verification against approved drawings and specifications.
• Lead commissioning and handover: testing, training, as-built drawings, operating manuals, spares, and asset records.
• Lead job hazard analyses and field risk assessments, implement proportionate controls, and investigate incidents and near misses through to verified corrective action.
• Run coordination meetings and report clearly on decisions, risks, and recovery options to stakeholders.

What You'll Bring:

• A degree in mechanical, electrical, civil, construction engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Roughly 7–12 years of relevant engineering and construction project delivery experience, with demonstrated independent ownership.
• A track record of personally delivering industrial facility buildouts or expansions, from scope through commissioning and handover.
• Experience managing construction inside occupied, operating facilities — segregation, contamination control, shutdowns, temporary services, safe restart.
• Direct experience with cleanroom or controlled-environment projects (general office fit-out experience alone isn’t sufficient).
• Working technical depth in building services and utilities (HVAC, electrical distribution, fire systems) sufficient to challenge designs and catch interface gaps.
• Contractor management and commercial discipline: scoping, bid evaluation, progress verification, variation management.
• Integrated planning skills connecting design readiness, approvals, procurement, construction sequencing, and operational handover into one executable plan.
• Practical knowledge of UAE construction delivery and local regulatory/approval processes.
• Hands-on EHS experience — personally conducting or facilitating JHAs, implementing field controls, investigating incidents.
• Strong commissioning and handover discipline.
• Proven ability to operate autonomously as an individual contributor and drive outcomes through influence rather than headcount.
• Clear written and spoken English.

Nice to Have:

• Experience delivering projects in Abu Dhabi or an industrial zone (e.g., KEZAD).
• Facilities experience in satellite, aerospace, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, or other precision manufacturing environments.
• Client-side project ownership experience.
• NEBOSH or equivalent EHS qualification.
• ISO 45001 / ISO 14001 implementation experience.
• PMP, APM, or equivalent project qualification.
• Cleanroom qualification or ISO 14644 familiarity.
• BIM coordination and clash review experience.
• Contract administration experience.
• Maintenance and facility asset management experience.
• Training/coaching capability for supervisors, employees, and contractors.

Orbitworks' mission is to make space simple for organizations that want to deploy physical and virtual missions to space. Building on Loft Orbital's heritage, Orbitworks will be the first commercial firm in the United Arab Emirates to mass-manufacture satellites. Orbitworks aims to manufacture tens of satellites annually and operates out of a 50,000-square-foot facility in Abu Dhabi.