Piping Designer

As a Piping Designer, you create the detailed routing and layout designs for piping systems in industrial facilities — refineries, power plants, pharmaceutical facilities, chemical plants, and manufacturing operations. You're working in 3D CAD software to route pipes through complex environments, ensuring they connect process equipment properly while maintaining access for maintenance, meeting code requirements, and avoiding clashes with structural and electrical systems.

Your day involves working in piping design software (AutoPLANT, PDMS, SP3D, or similar), developing pipe routing layouts, creating isometric drawings for fabrication, and coordinating with process engineers, structural designers, and equipment vendors. You're solving spatial puzzles — fitting pipes of various sizes and materials through congested spaces while maintaining proper slopes, clearances, and support spacing.

The challenge is managing complexity at scale. Large industrial facilities have thousands of pipe runs, and every route affects others. You need to think about constructability (can welders access the joints?), maintainability (can valves be operated?), and compliance (do stress analyses check out?). The people who excel here have strong spatial reasoning and genuine patience for detailed, precise work.