Staff Pavement Engineer

ARA is seeking a staff pavement engineer with a focus on pavement engineering and data science to join our growing Transportation Division.

This is a full-time position in our Ventura, CA office.

At ARA, you’ll be part of a collaborative, innovative, and mission-driven team.

We support engineers who want to grow technically, contribute to high-quality deliverables, and evolve into subject matter experts.

The staff pavement engineer will help transform pavement evaluation data into actionable engineering and asset-management decisions.

You’ll work at the intersection of nondestructive pavement testing, data science/AI, and mechanistic-empirical pavement design, contributing to research and consulting projects for state DOTs, local agencies, and federal sponsors.

This role is ideal for someone with hands-on experience using Traffic Speed Deflection Devices (TSDD) and Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) data and a passion for building data-driven and AI-based tools that improve infrastructure decisions.

What You’ll Do as a Staff Pavement Engineer:


* Import, process, and analyze TSDD, FWD, ground penetrating radar (GPR), and other pavement condition datasets; develop quality-control workflows and automate repeatable analytics.


* Derive network- and project-level structural indicators, remaining life estimates, and treatment triggers; support pavement management system strategy development.


* Build predictive and mechanistic-informed models (e.g., performance forecasting, transfer functions, layer moduli backcalculation pipelines) using Python and modern machine learning frameworks.


* Leverage large language models/AI to accelerate data cleaning, metadata extraction, report drafting, proposal writing, and interactive Q&A over large engineering document sets and databases.


* Conduct applied research and consulting work in pavement and geotechnical engineering, including design, analysis, materials testing, and condition evaluation.


* Integrate and visualize results in geographic information systems (GIS) and dashboards for internal teams and client stakeholders.


* Support mechanistic-empirical pavement design tasks; prepare inputs and interpret results from AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design (PMED).


* Contribute to proposals, technical reports, and client presentations; present findings at industry conferences and other venues.


* Participate in field investigations (periodic travel) to support data collection, validation, and client coordination.


* Collaborate with senior engineers and subject matter experts while developing toward independent technical leadership on research and consulting workstreams.

Staff Pavement Engineer Requirements:


* BS in Civil Engineering (Pavements/Transportation/Geotechnical) or closely related discipline with 2+ years of relevant experience or advanced degree.


* Academic, internship, and/or professional experience in areas such as pavement design, pavement ...