Sr. Piping Designer

Mariana Minerals•Houston, TX

About The Position

Mariana Minerals is a software-first, vertically integrated minerals company on a mission to supply the critical minerals powering modern energy, AI, and defense technologies. We’re reimagining the minerals supply chain by combining deep industry expertise with advanced software, automation, and data-driven decision-making. We are hiring Piping Design Engineers to rebuild how piping design is done. Piping is one of the largest cost and schedule drivers in a refinery, and one of the least automated disciplines in engineering. The workflow has barely changed in thirty years: someone routes a line by hand in a 3D model, someone else checks it by eye, and the quantities get counted downstream after the fact. The tooling available today, modeling software, geometry and CAD APIs, and modern AI coding assistants, has moved far enough that a large share of that work should be generated, checked, and optimized by software. That is the job. You will do the real design work including layout, routing, supports, stress, isometrics, quantities. And then go after the parts of it that should never have been manual. You will write the checks, build the scripts, and stand up the workflows that let a small team model a plant that would normally take an army of designers.

Requirements

Technical depth. You reason from first principles about geometry, loads, and flow instead of pattern-matching to the last project
3D design fluency. Real models and assemblies in a serious CAD environment. SolidWorks, Inventor, NX, CATIA, or Creo, or plant tools like AutoCAD Plant 3D, CADWorx, E3D, or SP3D
An automation instinct, with evidence. You have looked at a repetitive engineering task, decided it should be scripted, and actually tried
Willingness to build software with modern AI coding tools. No programming background required. You do need to be the engineer who picks up Claude Code or Cursor and ships something useful in the first month
Excitement about a new way of working. If the best answer for why a workflow exists is that it has always been done that way, this is not the right role
Judgment about when to automate. And when a script is a distraction from getting the design out the door
Clear writing. You will be documenting workflows other people follow
BS in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related field. New graduates are welcome. Equivalent hands-on design experience works in place of the degree

Responsibilities

Build the 3D model. Plot plans, equipment layout, line routing, supports, and issued-for-construction isometrics in AutoCAD Plant 3D
Draft the process documents. PFDs and smart P&IDs, plus Plant 3D project setup. Data Manager, spec catalogs, templates, and isometric configuration.
Carry lines from P&ID to IFC. Spec compliance, clash-free routing, operability and maintenance access, and vent, drain, and hydrotest details
Produce the quantities. Bills of material and take-offs generated from the model
Squad check, comment resolution, and multidiscipline model reviews with process, mechanical, structural, and electrical
Find the waste. Identify which parts of the workflow are repetitive, error-prone, or checked by eye, and make the case for automating them
Script the repetitive work. Spec and standards checks, bulk model edits, attribute and tag cleanup, quantity reporting, and clash triage
Build with AI coding tools. Use vibe coding tools to get from idea to working tool in days, and use version control so other people can run what you built
Connect the data. P&ID data, line lists, stress inputs, and procurement quantities moving between systems, so numbers are derived rather than retyped
Prototype the next workflow. Rules-driven routing, automated support placement, automated drawing and isometric checks, and model QC that runs continuously instead of at milestones