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Real projects, real mentoring, and real impact from day one. If you are looking for a place to start your engineering or surveying career without being put in a box, read on.
Every experienced professional in this industry started somewhere. A first site visit, a first survey traverse, a first consent application, a first time standing in front of a client and being expected to have an answer. The quality of those early experiences: the projects you work on, the people around you, the culture that shapes how you think about the craft. It matters enormously, and it shapes the kind of professional you become.
At Orogen, we think about that deliberately.
No boxes. No narrow briefs.
A lot of consultancies hire graduates into a single lane. You become a stormwater engineer, or a cadastral technician, or a documentation assistant, and you stay there while the interesting stuff happens around you.
That is not how Orogen works.
Graduate civil engineers at Orogen work across all components of professional consultancy practice: technical design and calculations, site investigations, stormwater, sewer and water systems, earthworks and roading, construction documents, and site visits. As a graduate in a single week, you might contribute to a consent application, process field observations, attend a site meeting, and work through a hydraulic design calculation.
Graduate surveyors split their time between field and office, working across topographical surveys, construction set-out, as-builts, Land Transfer subdivisions, unit titles, easements, and Landonline processes.
Graduate planners work across the full resource consenting space: subdivision and land use applications, district plan assessments, AEEs, section 92 responses, and council pre-application meetings. From early on, you are involved in the planning judgement that shapes how a project gets to yes, not just the paperwork that follows it.
Civil designers work alongside the engineering team turning concepts into deliverable design. That means 12d Model and AutoCAD Civil 3D for earthworks, roading, stormwater, and three-waters design, producing the drawing sets and construction documentation that get projects built. Civil designers at Orogen are part of the technical conversation, not separated from it.
That breadth is not accidental. It reflects the integrated nature of what Orogen does, and it produces professionals who understand how the disciplines connect rather than working in isolation within one of them.
Mentoring that is built into how we work
Mentoring at Orogen is not a formal programme with quarterly check-ins and a sign-off sheet. It is the way the practice operates day to day. Senior professionals work alongside graduates on the same projects, which means questions get answered in context, judgement calls get explained as they happen, and the reasoning behind technical decisions is visible rather than assumed.
For graduate surveyors, that means working directly with licensed cadastral surveyors and building the experience base and prerequisites toward Licensed Cadastral Surveyor (LCS) status. For graduate engineers, it means developing the technical depth and project delivery skills that lead to Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng). For graduate planners, it means working toward Intermediate and Full membership of the New Zealand Planning Institute (NZPI), with the project breadth and council exposure that those pathways require.
Orogen has supported a number of staff through being coming a Chartered Engineer, or a Licenced Cadastral Surveyor, and we take that role seriously. Members of our senior team sit, or have previously sat, on the Engineering New Zealand competency assessment panel and the Cadastral Surveyors Licensing Board examination panel. That means the people guiding your development are the same people who assess it at a national level. We know what these pathways look like from the inside, and we actively shape them.
What you will actually work on
For graduate engineers, that means getting hands-on with stormwater, sewer and water system design, including network modelling, hydraulics, and pressure systems. It means earthworks and roading: cut-and-fill designs, pavement and concrete work, geometric layouts. It means site investigations, construction documents, and being on site for construction management alongside experienced professionals. It also means client meetings, feasibility reports, and learning to translate technical complexity into clear, useful communication.
For graduate surveyors, it means field surveying across land development projects, cadastral work including subdivisions and unit titles, data processing and plan preparation in 12d Model and AutoCAD Civil 3D, and regulatory exposure through resource consents and compliance tasks.
For graduate planners, it means preparing and lodging resource consent applications, drafting AEEs, working through district plan rules, responding to section 92 requests, and engaging directly with council planners. You will also work alongside the engineering and surveying teams on the technical inputs that sit behind a good application.
For civil designers, it means producing earthworks, roading, stormwater, and three-waters designs in 12d Model and AutoCAD Civil 3D, preparing construction drawing sets, and working through design iterations with engineers as projects move from concept through to construction.
Orogen operates from Tawa (Wellington), Kāpiti, and Palmerston North. Depending on your base, you will work across a varied regional project portfolio, with the support of a team that is genuinely invested in your development.
Who we are looking for
We are not looking for people who want to clock in and be told what to do. We are looking for people who are curious, coachable, and detail-oriented. People who ask questions, who want to understand the why behind the what, and who take pride in doing the work properly. A degree in civil engineering or surveying is the starting point. Attitude and genuine interest in the craft are just as important.
If that sounds like you, or like someone you know, we would like to hear from you. Send your CV, academic transcript, and a brief note on why Orogen and what you are looking for. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for a conversation first, not a formal interview panel.
