Interdisciplinary- Architect/Engineer Manager at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — Chicago, IL

Civil works program management inside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a distinct career track from Corps design engineering, and this posting sits squarely in that management lane: the Architect-Engineer Manager role exists to run the contracts and internal design teams that actually produce a district's civil works projects, not to perform hands-on design. Based in the Corps' Regional Inland Navigation Design Production Center, this position covers navigation and civil works design work that tends to draw outside political attention, run on tight schedules, and demand real technical judgment under pressure — the kind of work behind lock-and-dam rehabilitation and inland waterway projects on systems like the Illinois Waterway and the broader Great Lakes and Mississippi River navigation network. The manager acts as the district's senior technical advisor on A/E contract matters, resolves disagreements between the parties involved in a project, manages budgets and milestones from initial studies through construction support, and is the person other engineer-managers and the district's own technical staff turn to whenever a question touches how an A/E contract is being administered. Notably, the actual duty station for this Chicago-area posting is confirmed only after tentative selection, which is common for Corps civil-works management positions that serve a production center rather than a single district office. Chicago anchors a major inland-navigation engineering market thanks to the Corps' Chicago District and the concentration of navigation and civil works program work tied to the Great Lakes system, alongside private A/E firms that compete for the Corps' contracted design work. Relative to a design engineer or project engineer, this role's defining skill set is program and contract management — a PMP-style credential or extensive A/E contract administration experience often carries as much weight here as PE licensure, even though the position sits within an engineering career series.