Nearshore Design & Permitting Engineer for Solar & EPC & Energy Storage teams
Produces plan sets, single-line diagrams and AHJ permit packages for residential and commercial PV + storage — with your standards and your review.
A nearshore design & permitting engineer is a trained, English-fluent professional based in Latin America who works U.S. hours inside your tools. Kurios City recruits, trains and deploys them in about 21 days, at 30–60% lower cost than a U.S.-based hire — the range published for LatAm back-office operations, with free replacement if the person doesn't perform.
What this role owns
- Plan sets and structural notes
- Single-line diagrams and load calcs
- AHJ portal submissions and revisions
- Utility interconnection applications
- Permit tracker and expediting
Stack we train on
Cost comparison
- Salary$68,400
- Mandatory benefits & payroll taxes$22,194
- Social Security + Medicare, FUTA/SUTA, workers' comp, health insurance, 401(k), PTO
- Tools, management & recruiting$23,406
- AI licenceYou pay it
- If they don't work outYou start over
- One monthly fee$3,700
- Mandatory benefits & payroll taxes$0
- Handled in-country. None of it lands on your payroll.
- Recruiting, training, managementIncluded
- Claude or Codex licenceIncluded
- If they don't work outFree replacement
Example figures for a Design & Permitting Engineer. The U.S. side is fully loaded — what the role actually costs your company, not the salary line. Your real numbers come out of the first call.
| U.S. hire | Kurios nearshore | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | USD 8,000–11,000 | USD 3,200–4,200 |
| Time to fill | 45–90 days | 21 days |
| Training on your stack | Your team's time | Included |
| Replacement | New search | Free |
| Time-zone overlap | Full | Full (UTC−5 / −6) |
Ranges are indicative. Final figures are scoped per market, role and seniority.
What the first 90 days look like
Week 1–3
Learns your design standards, your preferred equipment and the AHJs you work with most. Redraws three completed projects from your archive so you can compare their output against work you already approved.
Week 4–8
Takes live residential or small commercial designs with full review. Owns the permit package assembly and the AHJ correspondence log.
Month 3+
Owns design-to-permit turnaround as a cycle-time metric, and starts maintaining the AHJ requirements library — which is the asset that actually compounds.
How to tell a good design & permitting engineer from a cheap one
Ask for redlines, not renderings. Anyone can produce a clean Aurora layout; what separates a useful permitting engineer is how they handle a rejection from a jurisdiction with an unwritten preference. The second thing to check is whether they have worked with your code cycle — a designer fluent in NEC 2017 and unfamiliar with 2020 rapid shutdown requirements will cost you revisions on every job.
How this role is measured
Revisions per permit package. Design-to-permit cycle time is the headline, but revisions is the number that improves. Every revision is a jurisdiction telling you something you should have known.
| What we track | Why it is the right number |
|---|---|
| Design-to-permit cycle time | Days from intake to submitted package |
| Revisions per package | Trending toward zero as the AHJ library fills |
| First-pass approval rate | By jurisdiction, because they differ enormously |
| AHJ library entries | The asset that compounds across every future project |
These are the numbers we report back to you, not internal vanity metrics. If one of them stops moving, that is the conversation to have in the weekly check-in.
Available now
No profile available right now — request the role and Kurios sources it in 7–10 days.
Frequently asked
Are they licensed PEs?
No. They prepare packages for stamping by your PE; Kurios profiles include engineers with 2–6 years in PV design.
Which AHJs do they know?
Kurios trains on your top jurisdictions during onboarding and builds an internal AHJ playbook.
Can they stamp drawings?
No. A nearshore design engineer prepares the package; a licensed PE in the relevant state stamps it. This is the normal division of labour and it is what lets the expensive licensed hours go only to what requires a licence.
Which jurisdictions can they handle?
Any, but the first project in a new AHJ is slower while they learn its preferences. The value shows up on the fifth project in the same jurisdiction, when the requirements library means the package goes through without a revision.