Cost Engineer

Overview

This role supports capital projects across facilities in North America as a Cost Engineer, partnering with project teams to establish budgets, analyze performance, develop forecasts, identify emerging risks, and provide insights that improve project decisions and financial outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Partner with project managers and project controls professionals to establish project cost structures, control budgets, and cost-control procedures aligned with the work breakdown structure and contracting strategy.
• Maintain a complete and accurate project cost position across approved budget, commitments, actual costs, accruals, forecast-to-complete, estimate-at-completion, pending changes, contingency, and management reserve.
• Coordinate monthly cost-cycle activities, including data validation, accrual development, contractor forecast reviews, period close, and reconciliation between project controls and financial systems.
• Analyze project cost performance, trends, risks, and variances; communicate forecast movement through reports and dashboards; and recommend actions that improve project decisions and outcomes.
• Integrate cost and schedule information to evaluate project progress, earned value, cash flow, forecast phasing, milestone impacts, and the cost consequences of delay or acceleration.
• Monitor commitments, contracts, purchase orders, invoices, and payment status; partner with procurement and contract administration to identify gaps, duplicate exposure, uncommitted scope, and commercial risk.
• Collaborate with scheduling, estimating, risk, and change-management professionals to evaluate cost impacts, document assumptions, and translate risks and opportunities into cost exposure, contingency scenarios, and forecast ranges.
• Work with internal partners, contractors, and vendors to maintain timely, accurate, and auditable cost information, including source data, approvals, reconciliations, assumptions, and change history.
• Transform and integrate data from multiple systems into reliable, analysis-ready datasets and provide recurring or ad hoc insights to project teams and leadership.
• Coach project team members and external partners on cost-control expectations, coding discipline, forecast ownership, and timely submission of supporting data while contributing to continuous improvement of cost-engineering capabilities.

Measure of Success

• Timely, accurate, and traceable monthly cost reporting with clear ownership of forecast changes.
• Early identification of cost pressure, change exposure, and cash-flow impacts before they result in overruns.
• Consistent alignment among budget, commitments, actuals, accruals, forecast, schedule, and approved change records.
• Concise leadership reporting that distinguishes facts, assumptions, risks, opportunities, and required decisions.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications

• Two or more years of experience in project controls, cost engineering, or a related project-cost role supporting construction, capital, or other complex projects.
• Hands-on experience with budgeting, commitments, actual costs, accruals, cost forecasting, variance analysis, and change control across multiple work packages or commercial commitments.
• Experience using Excel and a project controls, enterprise resource planning, or financial system to reconcile and analyze large cost datasets.
• Demonstrated analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to interpret complex data and develop practical conclusions.
• Experience communicating complex cost information clearly to project teams and business leaders through reports, dashboards, or presentations.
• Ability to collaborate across project disciplines and appropriately challenge unsupported cost, forecast, or progress information.
• Willing and able to travel up to 25% (project dependent).

Preferred Qualifications

• Five or more years of experience in project controls or cost engineering.
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in engineering, construction management, building science, business, finance, accounting, or a related field.
• Experience supporting large or complex capital projects for an owner organization or in an engineering, procurement, and construction environment, particularly within a manufacturing or industrial operation.
• Experience with EcoSys or a comparable Enterprise Project Performance (EPP) system and visualization tools such as Qlik or Power BI.
• Working knowledge of earned value management, cost and schedule integration, and cash-flow forecasting.
• Relevant certification or active progress toward certification, such as AACE CCP, CEP, or EVP; PMI-SP; PMP; or a comparable project controls credential.

Compensation & Benefits

• Estimated pay range: $85,000–$135,000 per year.
• Variable pay eligibility: eligible for variable pay, issued as a monetary bonus or in another form.
• Benefits plan may include medical, dental, vision, flexible spending and health savings accounts, life insurance, ADD, disability, retirement, paid vacation/time off, educational assistance, and may also include infertility assistance, paid parental leave and adoption assistance (eligibility and availability vary by geographic region and plan rules).

Location

• Remote position for candidates located within the US.
• Requires up to 25% travel to headquarters and facilities in USA/Canada (based on business needs).

Additional Information

• Offers may be conditioned on successfully passing a drug test where required by law.
• E-Verify is used.
• Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status.