We’re looking for people who want to take action to protect the planet.

Opportunity

Natel Energy is seeking a detail-oriented and proactive Senior Commercial Manager to join our team! Natel designs, tests and implements high-performance FishSafe™ hydraulic turbines, helping the hydropower industry modernize while protecting biodiversity. You will join an exciting and fast-paced team where we manage complex Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects, ranging from domestic upgrades to large-scale international installations.

You will help us achieve our goals of modernization, decarbonization, and biodiversity by serving as the primary architect and guardian of our contractual risk framework. Your role is twofold: you will negotiate comprehensive and protective contracts, and then ensure compliance with those agreements. You will work closely with our legal, engineering, and project management teams to ensure that every stakeholder fully understands their obligations and that Natel’s interests are protected throughout the entire project lifecycle. This is a high-authority role designed to manage the critical back-to-back alignment between our utility and IPP clients and our OEM and field service partners.

Prior experience in the hydropower or heavy civil construction industry is a plus, but not required. A successful candidate will have a deep understanding of EPC contract structures and a proven track record of managing the project contract life cycle from contract negotiation to post-award compliance and change management. Candidates must be highly independent, effective communicators, and organized administrators.

This position will report to the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).

Responsibilities

Commercial Strategy & Negotiation 

• Contract negotiation: Lead the negotiation of our contracts, with particular attention to the alignment of high-risk provisions between our prime contracts and our subcontractor and OEM agreements.

• Gap mitigation: Identify and quantify liability gaps (e.g., warranty mismatches, LD caps, or indemnity voids), develop mitigation strategies (working as needed with the finance, legal and engineering teams), and work with the sales team to incorporate those into contracts.

• Risk allocation: Negotiate specific unforeseen condition and latent defect protocols to ensure the firm is not held liable for pre-existing site degradation.

Contract Governance

• Change orders: Own change management by monitoring risk and scope growth, drafting and negotiating change orders and amendments, and ensuring alignment under unforeseen conditions.

• Contract compliance: Hold the authority to withhold notice to proceed or halt subcontractor mobilization if mandatory compliance hurdles—such as performance bonds, certificates of insurance, or safety clearances—have not been met.

• Claims management: Lead the strategy for all major commercial claims. Ensure that notice of delay and discovery requirements are met within relevant timeframes to preserve the firm’s right to time and cost extensions.

Operational Compliance & Audit

• Project handover: Transition deals from sales to operations by creating project risk playbooks that distill complex contracts into actionable checklists for the project execution team to ensure all milestones, notice requirements, and deliverables are met. Proactively identify, interpret, and enforce project-specific requirements across quality, cybersecurity, safety, and financial compliance obligations in collaboration with Natel’s technical, commercial, and back office teams.

• Compliance auditing: Conduct regular commercial health checks on all active projects to ensure that site logs, EHS logs, daily reports, quality certificates, cyber-access audits, prevailing wage/Davis-Bacon reports, and communication with the customer are being maintained to a litigation-ready standard. Develop processes and training for the team to support these needs.

• Interface management: Work with the project execution team to ensure a clean commercial interface between our turbine design/delivery and third-party installers to prevent warranty contamination.

Required Experience & Qualifications

Professional Experience

• Tenure: 7-10 years of experience in commercial management, contract law, or project controls within the energy or heavy infrastructure sectors.

• Industry Focus: Direct experience in hydropower or similar high-consequence retrofit environments (nuclear, thermal, or offshore wind).

• Leadership: Proven track record of managing matrixed reporting lines and the ability to manage across functions on compliance issues.

Technical Skills & Education

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Mechanical/Civil) or Construction Management. Not required, but preferred Master’s in Construction Law (LLM), JD, or MBA.

• Contractual: High-level proficiency in negotiating and interpreting complex EPC and/or equipment supply contracts. Familiarity with FIDIC (Silver and Yellow Books) and NEC4 a plus. 

• Commercial forensic skills: Ability to analyze schedules (CPM) and cost reports to identify hidden delays or cost overruns that require contractual notices. Familiarity with project and contract management tools.

Competencies & Characteristics

• Comfortable acting as an independent auditor; ability to maintain professional objectivity when project schedules and contractual compliance conflict.

• A principled negotiation style capable of maintaining long-term relationships with utility customers and field services & OEM partners while firmly protecting the firm’s bottom line.

• Ability to translate complex legal risks into financial risk assessments for executive leadership.

• A motivation to apply your skills in a fast-paced environment where technical, operational, and legal requirements often overlap.

• An organized and data-driven approach to risk management.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills: comfortable providing firm guidance to external stakeholders while collaborating cross-functionally internally.

• Confidence in working independently to drive a contract from initial bid to final close-out.

Success Metrics

• Margin protection and change order recovery rate: Minimizing unrecovered changes and commercial leakage in contract execution.

• Back-to-back coverage: 100% alignment (or documented risk-acceptance) between prime and subcontract(s) penalties.

• Audit compliance: Zero instances of subcontractors mobilizing without valid insurance or performance securities; ensure all requirements for tax credits (on US projects) are met (FEOC, PWA, etc).

Primary Reporting: Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Functional Reporting: Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)

Compensation & Benefits

The expected base salary range for this remote position is $130,000 to $185,000. The final compensation offer including specific level and corresponding pay, will be determined based on a variety of factors including but not limited to: job-related knowledge, skills, and experience, geographic work location, business needs, other compensation components, and/or market demands.

In addition to competitive salaries, we offer equity to new employees and incentive compensation  based on team performance.

We are proud to offer great benefits like 4 weeks of paid vacation, 2 weeks of paid sick leave, 401k matching, and health insurance (along with dental, vision and life insurance). We want our team to live full lives outside of work.

Location

Natel has a mixed in-person and remote team, with our headquarters and test facility located in Alameda, California. Excellent applicants for local or remote employment are welcome to apply; remote applicants must be willing to work west coast business hours. Occasional travel may be required for negotiations, site visits, or partner meetings.

Opportunity

This O&M Regional Manager is responsible for the day-to-day operations of all hydro and dam related activities ensuring 24/7 conformance with safety, regulatory and other contractual agreements within the assigned region. This position will also be responsible for managing civil repairs, creating budgets, and interacting with various agencies, contractors, and engineering firms. The Regional Manager will report to the Director of Hydro and work in conjunction with the regulatory, business development, health and safety and other departments, as necessary. This position is remote but will require travel to projects as needed based on the requirements at the time along with supporting Natel's  FishSafe™ turbine  installations.

Responsibilities

Primary Responsibilities include, but not limited to:

• Assure plants are operated and maintained in conformance with outlined agreements including federal, state and local requirements.

• Manage a team of Operators assigned to the sites.

• Manage and schedule personnel and third-party contractors to ensure immediate execution of corrective maintenance and emergency repairs.

• Develop purchase orders for site and contractor needs. 

• Approval of payment for purchase orders. 

• Coordinate, track, and manage maintenance activities performed by site personnel and or third-party providers. 

• Perform routine, scheduled, unscheduled, and corrective maintenance within the assigned region. This work may include civil, electrical, and mechanical.

• Lead the rapid evaluation and troubleshooting of equipment and structures.

• Support as needed with FishSafe™and other projects.

Other Duties

• Provide or procure the support for operations as needed.

• Interface with the necessary teams to develop and implement a multi-year maintenance plan.

• Interface with the necessary internal or external teams to resolve issues relevant to the plants. 

• Review environmental and regulatory compliance and develop into standardized plans.

• Interface with the necessary teams for support of any procurement actions as required to support the region.

• Management and implementation of capital and operational expenditures.

• Support in the budgeting process for the sites.

• Work with various departments writing work scopes, getting quotes, and scheduling work.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• At least 4 years’ experience related to Hydro-Electric operations and maintenance or equivalent field experience.

• Electrical license or demonstrated strong electrical background 

• Ability to work as part of a team and involve others in decisions when appropriate.

• Ability to take initiative in problem solving.

• Ability to read drawings and schematics for electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, civil, concrete, and site layout.

• Able to travel to remote sites.

• Project Management experience is a plus.

• Competence in use of a personal computer for word processing, spreadsheets, project scheduling, photo processing, and e-mail reporting.

Compensation & Benefits

The expected base salary range for this New York-based remote position is $99,000-$145,000, which encompasses three seniority levels. The final compensation offer including specific level and corresponding pay, will be determined based on a variety of factors including but not limited to: job-related knowledge, skills, and experience, geographic location (within New York State), business needs, other compensation components, and/or market demands.

In addition to competitive salaries, we offer equity to new employees and incentive compensation  based on team performance.

We are proud to offer great benefits like 4 weeks of paid vacation, 2 weeks of paid sick leave, 401k matching, and health insurance (along with dental, vision and life insurance). We want our team to live full lives outside of work.

Location

• This position is considered remote but requires a presence in New York State. 

• Travel can average 50% of time.

Natel’s team and test facility is located in Alameda, California. About half of our employees work in person at the Alameda, California location on a regular basis, and the others are fully remote. As a distributed team, we communicate regularly using Slack and video conferencing. We make an effort to gather the full team in real life occasionally, and we plan more frequent gatherings for lunch and happy hours with the local team.

Our hiring process

Natel Energy is committed to building, supporting, and growing a diverse team. We have a standardized interview process designed to reduce individual bias, and have structured pay scales to prevent inequity. We don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Opportunity

Natel Energy is seeking a skilled and motivated turbine CFD design engineer to join our team! Natel designs, tests and implements high-performance FishSafe™ hydraulic turbines, helping the hydropower industry modernize while preserving biodiversity. You will join an exciting and fast paced team where we develop customized solutions for some of the largest turbines in the global fleet down to scale model performance test units.

You will help us achieve our goals of modernization, decarbonization, and biodiversity by designing and optimizing hydro turbine geometry from first principles through detailed CFD and, at times, through to physical scale model testing. You will work with other hydraulic design engineers at Natel to complete regular design deliverables for customers and partners, aid the commercial team with proposals, conduct R&D-related analysis and design work for test equipment, and improve and automate processes for increased throughput.

Prior experience in the hydro industry is a plus, but not required. A successful candidate will have a strong foundation of engineering fundamentals and systems design, with focused expertise in utilizing CFD to support system or product development. Candidates must be effective communicators, collaborators, and independent contributors. Candidates must also be creative and driven problem solvers, not satisfied with the status quo.

Responsibilities

• Lead the modern hydro turbine industry with design and analysis techniques to produce competitive, efficient, fish-safe, and manufacturable turbine and hydropower facility designs and upgrades.

• Utilize Siemens NX, STAR-CCM+, and other related tools as necessary for hydraulic turbine design, analysis, and optimization. Apply existing design and analysis workflows as well as develop new and improved methods and automations.

• Become an expert in Natel’s system and product design space. Understand tradeoffs in hydraulic design performance, cost, and mechanical + operational implications; interpret and apply customer and site design requirements along with performance and fish survival models and test data; propose and deliver solutions (profiles, layouts, loads) and associated documentation.

• Assess test data of sub- and full-scale systems to inform design approaches; design and participate in conducting performance tests. Document and report analysis and test approaches and results in formats ranging from tabular data to figures to publication-worthy reports and presentations.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• At least 3 years experience in related role(s)

• A bachelor’s degree or higher in an applicable engineering discipline (mechanical, aerospace, etc)

• Competence with advanced CAD surfacing and parametric modeling techniques (preferably in Siemens NX)

• Competence in single and multiphase aerodynamic or hydrodynamic CFD meshing and analysis, preferably with complete turbomachinery or other rotating systems, preferably with STAR-CCM+

• Familiarity with data analysis and/or automation coding languages (eg. Python, Java)

• A motivation to apply your skills and knowledge in a fast-paced R&D and production environment

• An organized and data-driven approach to problem solving

• Strong written and verbal communication skills: comfortable receiving as well as providing guidance and technical material from/to engineers, designers, technicians, and suppliers

• Confidence in working independently to drive a project forward

Not Required, but Pluses:

• Proficiency in Siemens NX surfacing techniques

• Expertise in STAR-CCM+

• Experience in the design or analysis of hydro turbines or pumps or turbomachinery in general

• Both Windows and Linux based HPC setup and job management experience

• Endorsements or certifications in applicable skill areas

Compensation & Benefits

The starting base salary range for this role is $120,000 - $170,000. This range may be modified in the future. Starting pay for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of job-related factors, which may include job-related knowledge, skills, and experience, market location, business needs, other compensation components, and/or market demands.

In addition to competitive salaries, we offer equity to new employees and incentive compensation  based on team performance.

We are proud to offer great benefits like 4 weeks of paid vacation, 2 weeks of paid sick leave, 401k matching, and health insurance (along with dental, vision and life insurance). We want our team to live full lives outside of work.

Location

Natel’s team and test facility is located in Alameda, California. Willingness to relocate here is definitely a plus, but Natel will consider excellent remote candidates provided they can work west coast hours. Occasional travel may be required for supplier site visits, field testing, or similar.

About half of our employees work in person at the Alameda, California location on a regular basis, and the others are fully remote. As a distributed team, we communicate regularly using Slack and video conferencing. We make an effort to gather the full team in real life occasionally, and we plan more frequent gatherings for lunch and happy hours with the local team.

Our hiring process

Natel Energy is committed to building, supporting, and growing a diverse team. We have a standardized interview process designed to reduce individual bias, and have structured pay scales to prevent inequity. We don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.