Senior Building Envelope Systems Designer

Job description

Title: Senior Building Envelope Systems Designer Location: Greater Toronto Area Company: Triumph Group of Companies Role Overview The Senior Building Envelope Systems Designer designs, develops, and standardizes the building envelope systems behind Triumph's cladding, glazing, curtain wall, and window and door products. You report to the VP of Glazing and PrimeFab, and you work closely with estimating, fabrication, and field teams across Cladding, ICI Glazing, Primeline, and PrimeFab to make sure systems perform in the real world, not just on paper. This is a technical role with real reach: the details and assemblies you develop don't stay on one project, they become the standard that other designers reuse across the company for years afterward, long after the original job that prompted them has closed out. You'll be the person other teams call when an envelope condition doesn't have an obvious answer yet, and the person whose sign-off means a detail is genuinely ready to build, not just ready to look finished on paper. Good work in this role means an assembly you developed shows up correctly on a jobsite months later with no surprises: the thermal performance holds up under real weather, the interfaces with adjacent systems work the way they were drawn, and the crew installing it isn't left guessing at how the pieces are supposed to fit together on site. You'll spend your time on design assist with clients, building out a shared library of standardized details, and working through the envelope problems that don't have an easy answer yet, the kind that show up when two systems from different divisions meet at a corner or a transition and nobody has drawn that condition before. Some weeks that means sitting with a client team weighing a cladding system against a curtain wall system on cost, schedule, and performance, and helping them understand exactly what they're trading off with each option so the decision is an informed one rather than a guess. Other weeks it means being on-site with a fabrication crew figuring out why a mockup failed a water test, then going back and updating the standard detail so the next crew, on a different project entirely, doesn't run into the same problem. The people who thrive here own their designs past the drawing stage. When a detail doesn't hold up in the field, they say so, figure out why, and fix the standard so it doesn't happen again, rather than treating the drawing as finished the day it was issued and someone else's problem after that. Over time, that habit is what turns a personal design decision into a company standard other people can trust without having to re-verify it themselves. What We Offer Salary: $170,000 to $220,000, commensurate with experience. Where you land in that range depends on the depth of your envelope design background, the complexity of the systems you've personally developed, and how much of that experience translates directly to cladding, glazing, curtain wall, and window and door work. Your salary is reviewed periodically as your scope and standing on the standardized detail library grow. Annual bonus tied to individual performance and the overall results of the Glazing and PrimeFab group, so your compensation reflects both the quality of your own design work and how the broader team performs over the course of the year. This ties your reward directly to outcomes you can see and influence, not to an abstract company-wide number. Comprehensive benefits package covering health, dental, and the other standard group benefits Triumph offers its full-time staff, starting once you clear the standard eligibility period, so you and your family have coverage in place early in your tenure. A senior technical role with real influence over how Triumph's envelope systems are designed and standardized company wide, not a role where your drawings sit in a single project folder and are never looked at again once the job closes out. What you build here gets reused. Exposure across Cladding, ICI Glazing, Primeline, and PrimeFab, rather than a single product line, so the systems knowledge you build on one assembly compounds across the business instead of staying siloed inside one division. You see how a decision in one product line ripples into another. On-site collaboration with fabrication and field teams in the Greater Toronto Area, with occasional visits to plants and job sites so you can see, firsthand, how the systems you design actually get built, installed, and lived with, rather than working entirely from a desk removed from the outcome. Room to build something that lasts well beyond any single project: a standardized detail and assembly library used across the organization, one that becomes part of how Triumph designs envelope systems for years after you've personally moved on from any one job or project team. It's the kind of work you can point to well into the future and say you built the foundation for it. A workplace culture built around straight talk and shared standards, where a design problem gets raised and solved openly rather than quietly patched over and left for the next person to rediscover the hard way, on their own project, without the benefit of what you already learned. What You Bring to the Table Technical Skills 10 or more years of experience designing building envelope systems, including cladding, curtain wall, glazing, or window and door assemblies, in a design, engineering, or fabrication environment, with a track record of details that made it all the way from concept sketch through to a working, weathertight assembly on a real building, not just through a design review. That includes experience working across more than one product type, since the interfaces between systems are often where the hardest and most valuable design work happens. Proficient in AutoCAD for detailing and drawing development, with working knowledge of thermal modeling software such as THERM, and comfortable using both together to test whether a proposed assembly will actually perform before it's built, rather than finding out after it's already installed and the fix is expensive. University degree in architecture, engineering, or a related building science field, giving you the technical grounding to evaluate a system based on its underlying physics and structural behaviour, not just on how clean or complete the drawing looks on paper. Solid grounding in building science fundamentals, including thermal performance, air and water management, and building physics, along with the judgment to apply those fundamentals to systems and interface conditions that haven't been standardized yet and don't have a textbook answer. You're comfortable working from first principles when a manufacturer's standard detail doesn't quite fit the condition in front of you. Professional Engineer (P.Eng) designation is an asset but not required. What matters more day to day is that your designs hold up to engineering scrutiny and real-world performance whether or not you personally hold the stamp on the drawing. Attributes Communicates clearly and directly with engineers, tradespeople, and clients, translating technical detail into terms everyone in the room can actually act on, whether that's a one-page sketch for a foreman on site or a full technical package for a formal design review with a design team. Knowing how to pitch the same information differently to each audience is a big part of getting a design actually built the way it was intended. Comfortable owning a design decision and revisiting it openly if new field or test information proves it wrong, rather than defending a detail purely because it has already been issued and stamped once. Being right eventually matters more than being right the first time. Thinks like a builder as much as a designer, weighing fabrication tolerances, installation sequencing, and what a crew can realistically build on site, alongside the architectural intent behind a system, so the detail works in practice and not only on the drawing board. That perspective usually comes from having spent real time in a fabrication shop or on a jobsite, not only in a design office. Shares knowledge freely and documents what works so the next designer isn't starting from scratch on a problem someone else already solved, treating the detail library as a shared company asset rather than a personal one they keep to themselves. That includes writing details up clearly enough that someone who wasn't in the room can still follow the reasoning behind them. Curious and hands-on, genuinely drawn to solving a hard technical problem rather than repeating a familiar detail out of habit, and willing to sit with an unresolved interface condition until it actually works in practice, even if that takes more than one attempt. Duties & Responsibilities Design and develop building envelope assemblies and systems across cladding, glazing, curtain wall, and window and door products, carrying each one from an initial concept sketch through to a construction-ready detail that fabrication and field teams can build from without having to guess at the designer's intent. That means coordinating structural, thermal, and weatherproofing requirements into a single buildable package rather than handing off a set of ideas for someone else to reconcile later. Lead Design Assist collaboration with clients and project teams to align system selection with performance, cost, and schedule goals, laying out trade-offs openly so the client understands exactly what they're gaining or giving up with each option on the table before they commit. That often means presenting more than one viable system and walking a client team through the reasoning behind each, rather than simply defaulting to the option Triumph knows best. Build and maintain a standardized library of envelope details, assemblies, and specifications that other teams can reuse across projects, so a problem that's already been solved on one job doesn't have to be solved again from scratch on the next one, by someone else, months later. This includes keeping the library current as materials, codes, and manufacturer specifications change, so what's in it stays trustworthy rather than becoming outdated. Evaluate proposed systems for thermal performance and air and water management using tools such as THERM, catching performance problems on the drawing board where they're cheap to fix instead of after the assembly has already been fabricated and installed. Review RFPs and proposal drawings to confirm envelope systems are constructible, code compliant, and priced accurately before submission, acting as a technical check on the work before a bid ever goes out the door and commitments are made to a client. Catching a design or pricing gap at this stage is far cheaper than discovering it after the contract is signed. Partner with fabrication and field teams to test new assemblies, resolve constructability issues as they come up, and update the relevant standards based on what's learned, closing the loop between what gets drawn in the office and what actually gets built on site. That often means attending a mockup test or a first installation in person rather than relying only on a report back from the field. Identify and resolve interface conditions between glazing, cladding, panel, and window systems across Triumph's divisions, the transition points where two systems from different product lines meet and a clean, tested detail doesn't already exist. These are usually the highest-risk points on a project, and solving them well the first time protects the schedule for everyone downstream. Support value engineering by proposing system alternatives that reduce cost or improve performance without compromising quality, giving project teams real, technically sound options instead of a single fixed design with no flexibility built in. Provide technical troubleshooting and quality assurance support when field or fabrication issues surface on active projects, getting personally involved when something in the field isn't performing the way it was designed and detailed to. This can mean a same-week site visit to diagnose a failure before it delays the rest of the schedule. Mentor junior designers and drafters on envelope principles, detailing standards, and the tools used to develop them, passing along both the technical fundamentals and the judgment that only comes from having watched a detail fail in the field and having to go fix it yourself. Over time, this builds a bench of designers who can be trusted with harder problems without needing everything checked twice. Company Overview: Triumph Group of Companies Triumph Group of Companies is a diversified construction and infrastructure services organization supporting projects across multiple sectors. We provide specialized services in roofing, waterproofing, cladding, energy, restoration, and glazing, ensuring comprehensive care of building envelopes and infrastructure for the clients and communities we serve. Our culture is built on safety, accountability, teamwork, and consistent standards across all divisions. We value people who take ownership, communicate directly, and help move work forward, even when the easier path would be to let a problem sit for someone else to find. This role sits at the center of that standard, shaping how Triumph's cladding, glazing, and window systems are designed and built across every division that touches the building envelope, from first concept sketch to the finished, weathertight building. As Triumph continues to grow across the Greater Toronto Area and beyond, the standards this role sets have an outsized effect on how consistently that growth translates into buildings that perform.