Growing up in Lodi—a juggernaut of grape production for California’s wine industry—CJ Porter, ’18, MS ’19, learned early on how dependent farmers are on water and how difficult it can be for them to adapt to fluctuations between wet years and droughts. “Water is arguably our most critical resource, aside from maybe clean air,” he says. At Stanford, his freshman adviser helped him find his way to civil engineering, a field in which he could envision making a positive impact with his work. He learned more about water systems during his co-terminal master’s program in civil and environmental engineering, then dove into work as a water resources engineer at Jacobs, an engineering consulting and technical services firm with 60,000 employees globally. He’s based in the company’s Sacramento office.
On his first project, from 2021 to 2023, Porter helped the California Department of Water Resources update the state’s blueprint for flood management for the Central Valley. He performed economic analyses, quantifying the investments that would be needed to fund flood-risk reduction projects in the state’s designated flood-control areas. He also worked to quantify the effects of climate change—such as projected temperature, precipitation, and hydrologic changes—on the water supply, flood control, and conveyance facilities across the Central Valley. He received his professional engineering license in June.
Photo: Courtesy CJ Porter
STANFORD: What do water resources engineers do?
Porter: It encapsulates anything that has to do with water in the built environment or supplying water to people throughout the world. You can focus on, for example, the water treatment path. You can focus on drinking water and reusing conveyance. There’s a planning side. You can get really into design. It really depends on where your heart is. I personally am on the planning side of things, focused on water management and flood management.
What projects are you working on now?
At the moment, I’m working on around 10 projects in some capacity. On some projects, my role is more project management oriented; on others, I’m providing technical expertise, processing model outputs, performing fieldwork, or supporting planning efforts.
I’m working on a handful of water supply operations and modeling projects. I’m also supporting the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) on a variety of multi-benefit floodplain restoration pilot studies that are being conducted along the upper San Joaquin, Cosumnes, and Pajaro rivers. These pilot studies [help] identify opportunities to enhance habitat, reduce flood risk, and provide other benefits. My role on these efforts is more project management, outreach, and coordination oriented rather than modeling focused. I’ve also supported DWR in producing a number of [interactive] ESRI StoryMaps to provide additional information and document the findings of [the restoration study] efforts.
Did your Stanford coursework prepare you for this work?
Stanford gave me a great foundation. I’m particularly happy that I stuck around and co-termed. I think that just took [my knowledge] up another notch, and I didn’t feel like I had to guess what I really wanted to do within water resources engineering after I graduated.
We did a capstone project my senior year that touches on some of the things that we do in the consulting space. We focused on creating or at least planning a decentralized water system for the town of Paradise, [Calif.], which had been caught up in a wildfire in 2018. I thought a lot of it was super important to my career, those soft skills. You know, writing and communicating are so important. I cannot emphasize that enough. I do so much writing now. I didn’t think I’d be doing as much writing as I do today, but it’s just a great skill to have. You’re always going to have to write—tech memos, reports, and that sort of thing. If you can go from the hard engineering stuff, the math and science portion, and really digest that for different audiences, or the client, that’s super valuable.
Can you explain more about your day-to-day routine?
Depending on the projects you have, you’ll have recurring meetings that happen around a routine schedule each week. But, typically, there’s stuff that just pops up every week as well. It’s super fast-paced. No week is the same. I think that’s one of the things I really like about working here.
I have a hybrid setup. I’ll try to go in two days a week, and otherwise, I’m working from home. Even when I’m in the office we still have most meetings and client calls over Microsoft Teams. It’s virtual even when we’re in person. We try to create in-person opportunities, to get people in the office. There’s a pretty good crew of people that come in pretty frequently in Sacramento, which is great.
Especially early on in your career, getting that face time with your co-workers is really important for the mentoring piece, as well as just getting pulled into different projects. There’s a lot of stuff that I probably wouldn’t have gotten exposure to if I hadn’t been talking with someone in the office. I’ve been happy with this hybrid approach.
What surprised you when you first started water resources engineering?
It’s a good question. Jacobs is a huge, huge company, where we have a ton of offices in California alone. There was a lot to learn jumping into the consulting space, just seeing how we operate. That’s something that I’m still continuing to learn about as I spend more time in this role—about how consulting works, the bigger picture, how to chase work, and how we deliver that work. There’s just a lot more to learn there than I had anticipated.
What is the most challenging part of the job?
Early on, it was hard balancing the workload. It took me a while to figure that out and get in a place where I’m not burning myself out. If you’re going after your [professional engineering license], like I was, you’re spending your evenings or weekends studying for exams. But I’ve hit a good balance now.
What is the most rewarding part of the job?
The most rewarding piece for me is delivering products and projects. Also, making sure that the client is happy with what we’re delivering. When we get confirmation that the work that we’re doing is meeting or exceeding their expectations, that’s super rewarding for me. I really like engaging with clients.
In this position with Jacobs, there’s a lot of opportunity. I’m not siloed within a certain agency. We do work all over, so there’s plenty of opportunity to get exposure to different geographies and whatnot. It’s not just focused on a certain agency’s jurisdiction. The world is your oyster.
Can you share advice for young engineers?
I would say don’t fret about not having it all figured out. In college, there are going to be some people that are hyper-focused, and they know exactly what they want to do, but I think engineering is a huge space, and continuing to just work hard and push toward that longer vision that you might have is super important.
I’ll just emphasize again: Don’t let those soft skills slip. Making sure you’re a good communicator and a good writer is incredibly important, in addition to really building up your engineering foundation and developing that skill set.
Early on—like, freshman year—don’t even worry about your major. Explore those courses and see what really resonates with you.
Kalissa Greene, ’25, was an editorial intern at Stanford. Email her at stanford.magazine@stanford.edu.
