Irrigation Engineer

Location: All India. Based in Bengaluru, with project sites across the country and extensive travel.
Employment: Full-time
Function: AgOps, working closely with Agronomy and Supply Chain
Reports to: Head AgOps

About FinAgra
FinAgra is building a new model for commercial agriculture in emerging markets. We combine financing, agronomy, technology, and farm operations to turn underperforming farmland into professionally managed, productive farming businesses.

Role Summary

FinAgra is looking for an irrigation engineer to own the technical design of irrigation systems across our project sites, covering horticulture and agri crops. Each site needs a system matched to its crop, soil, water source and season, at a capital cost that pays back quickly and that can, wherever possible, be redeployed to another site.

This is a purely technical role. You will assess fields and existing infrastructure, choose the irrigation method, produce the design and technical specification, evaluate supplier proposals on technical merit, and supervise installation and in-season performance. Quotations, negotiation and supplier selection sit with the supply chain team, with whom you will work closely.

What You Will Do

Field assessment and design

• Survey each new project site for topography, soil type, water source, water quality, discharge and availability, and determine the irrigation requirement for the crop and acreage.

• Assess pre-existing irrigation infrastructure at the site and establish what can be reused, what needs upgrading and what must be replaced.

• Select the appropriate irrigation method for each site and justify the choice on agronomic and technical grounds: drip (inline and online), sprinkler, micro-sprinkler, rain gun, mini-sprinkler, furrow and surface, and, where relevant, centre pivot or semi-permanent portable systems.

• Match the irrigation method to the economics of the crop. For high-value crops, specify the system that maximises yield, uniformity and fertigation control, where a higher capital cost per acre is justified by the return. For low-value and bulk crops, where cost per acre is the binding constraint, design the lowest-cost workable system that still delivers adequate and timely water. Cost is optimised against crop value, but water adequacy is never traded away.

• Prepare hydraulic designs, layouts and Bills of Quantity: mainlines, sublines, laterals, emitters and spacing, filtration (screen, disc, sand, hydrocyclone), venturi and fertigation units, valves, air-release and flush assemblies, pump and motor sizing, and head-loss calculations.

• Design for relocatability wherever the crop and inter-row spacing allow, maximising salvage value of laterals, sublines and filters when a system moves to another site.

Technical specification and evaluation

• Draft the technical and functional specification for each system, in a form the supply chain team can take to market.

• Assess supplier proposals on technical merit against that specification, flag gaps and deviations, and provide a written technical recommendation.

• Support Total Cost of Ownership and Cost Benefit Analysis calculations, including cost per acre and expected payback, where the business needs them.

• Coordinate closely with the supply chain team, which owns quotations, negotiation and supplier selection.

Installation and commissioning

• Supervise installation at site: trenching, laying, jointing, pressure testing, commissioning and handover.

• Verify that material delivered to site matches the approved technical specification.

• Train REPs and field teams on operation, valve and zone scheduling, filter cleaning, flushing and routine maintenance.

• Troubleshoot in-season issues such as clogging, pressure variation, uneven discharge, leakages and pump problems, and fix the root causes.

Fertigation and season support

• Work with the Agronomy team to convert crop nutrition plans into fertigation schedules the system can actually run, including injection rates, compatibility and timing.

• Track water use, uniformity and system performance through the season, and report to Program Management for production reporting and decision making.

What We Are Looking For

Required

• B.Tech or B.E. in Agricultural Engineering, Irrigation and Water Management, Civil Engineering, or an equivalent discipline.

• 4-8 years of hands-on experience designing and commissioning irrigation systems on projects of comparable scale. Individual project sites of 50 acres and above, and a portfolio running into several hundred acres. Experience limited to small or single-acre installations will not be sufficient.

• Strong, demonstrable expertise in drip irrigation: design, hydraulics, installation, fertigation integration and in-season maintenance. This is non-negotiable.

• Working knowledge of the full range of irrigation methods listed above, and the judgement to pick between them for a given field.

• Sound understanding of farm-level water infrastructure: borewells, open wells, farm ponds, sumps, pump and motor selection, water quality and filtration requirements.

• Familiarity with the product ranges and technical specifications of major irrigation OEMs, and the ability to compare systems on technical merit.

• Familiarity with government micro-irrigation schemes and standards (PMKSY and state horticulture department norms) and the technical documentation they require.

• Comfort with design and drawing tools such as irrigation design software, AutoCAD and spreadsheet-based hydraulic and cost modelling.

Preferred

• Prior experience with horticulture, plantation or high-value field crops.

• Experience with relocatable or modular irrigation systems.

• Exposure to soil moisture sensing, automation or remote monitoring of irrigation.

• Experience preparing technical specifications and evaluating vendor proposals for an owner or client organisation rather than for a supplier.

Who Will Thrive in This Role

You are an engineer first. You can stand in a field, read the water, the soil and the crop, and tell the team what system it needs and what it will cost to run over its life. You write specifications that leave no room for a supplier to under-deliver, and you can defend a design on technical merit without reaching for commercial arguments.

You are comfortable working across dispersed locations with limited supervision, you follow a system through the season rather than handing it over and walking away, and you keep records and report consistently enough that the next design is better than the last.

Other Requirements

• Willingness to travel extensively and spend the majority of working time at project sites anywhere in India.

• Valid driving licence (four-wheeler preferred).