Civil & Infrastructure
Concrete, drainage, construction chemicals, structural reinforcing, heavy building materials
Civil and infrastructure sales works differently from commercial building products. The projects are bigger, the timelines are longer, and the first conversations happen with engineers and contractors well before they happen with architects. Most of it runs on government money, the work stretches across years, and the rep who wins here knows how to read a drawing, quote against AS 3600 and AS/NZS 4671, and hold a relationship from early specification all the way through to product on site.
This is the world of tier-one contractors, specialist subcontractors, councils, water authorities, and the consulting engineers who control specification. When the pipeline is full, every manufacturer in the space is hiring at once. When it slows, the good salespeople are the last to move, because their employers know exactly what they have.
I recruit across this sector for manufacturers and distributors who need salespeople that can navigate the standards, the procurement structures, and the patience the work demands. Concrete, drainage, reinforcing, geosynthetics, construction chemicals, formwork, piling, waterproofing, asphalt and civil consumables.
I recruit civil and infrastructure sales roles across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Related reading: hiring civil and infrastructure sales reps and hiring civil BDMs with an engineering background. Admixtures, repair and protection are a specialism of their own, and I set out how that market hires on the waterproofing and construction chemicals page.
Here's the honest version. Civil and infrastructure is the most technical corner of the market I work in. Big volumes, long timelines, and projects that take years to deliver. Nobody would call it glamorous. I find it genuinely interesting anyway.
The further in you get, the more you notice the stuff most people never think about. Waterproofing inside a road tunnel. Crack injection in a structure that has to last decades. Polyurea and polyurethane systems quietly doing a job you would never know was there. Government spending decides what gets built and when. A job moves from engineers to contractors long before anything turns up on site.
For someone who used to run a pub, I never expected to find any of this as interesting as I do. Here we are.
Then there are the projects that stand out. The landmark ones you drive past years later. The salespeople I place sold the products that went into work like that, the kind built to last. Knowing I had a small part in that never gets old. I even end up telling my wife which projects they work on.
The technical bar sits higher than most hiring managers expect. A civil rep has to move through a stack of Australian Standards, AS 3600 for concrete, AS/NZS 4671 for reinforcing, AS/NZS 3725 for buried pipe, AS 5100 for bridges, and hold a conversation about embodied carbon, Environmental Product Declarations and Infrastructure Sustainability ratings alongside the price list. A rep who cannot speak that language gets pulled into price-only conversations and quietly sidelined by the engineers and pre-contracts teams who decide what goes in.
What the role really needs is an engineering brain and a contractor's commercial instinct in the same person. That combination is rare. The cycles are long, typically 12 to 24 months from early specification influence through to product on site, roughly double a commercial building products cycle. A new rep usually takes 9 to 18 months to reach full productivity. Get the hire wrong and the cost runs well past the salary. Lost tenders. A cooled relationship with a contractor who does not hand out second chances. A year of pipeline that never arrives. The pool of people who combine genuine engineering literacy with real sales ability is small, and the good ones know what they are worth.
One more thing worth saying. Civil is field culture. Ute, boots, PPE, site visits in the rain. The filter starts there, and a rep who does not want to be on the road and on site will not last, however good the CV looks.
Civil and infrastructure is not one talent pool. It is a set of separate sub-worlds, and the people in them are not interchangeable. Working out which corner a candidate actually owns is most of the job.
Construction chemicals and waterproofing. Admixtures, sealants, grouts, protective coatings, waterproofing membranes, crack injection, polyurea and polyurethane systems. A rep here is selling technical judgement under defect risk, and managing a three-way relationship between specifier, applicator and distributor where any one of the three can sink the job. Standards like AS 3740 and AS 4654 are the floor, not a bonus. This is a different role from a concrete rep, and the two rarely swap cleanly.
Concrete and reinforcing. Precast, ready-mix, bagged cement, rebar, mesh, post-tensioning. Big volumes, tight schedules, and a sale that lives or dies on supply reliability and price held against AS 3600 and AS/NZS 4671. The rhythm is volume and delivery, a different skill from the long specification cycle in chemicals.
Drainage, pipe and ground engineering. Stormwater, buried concrete pipe to AS/NZS 3725, geosynthetics for ground stabilisation. This is the council, water authority and consulting engineer world, where the pre-tender relationship is everything and the cycle is patient.
On-site systems. Formwork, scaffolding, pumps, height safety. Sold to contractors and site teams on active jobs, where availability and a trusted relationship win the order. Different buyer, different pace, different person again.
Knowing which of these a candidate genuinely owns, rather than which they have brushed past, is the part a generalist recruiter cannot do.
Civil packages often carry a higher variable component tied to project wins, and car allowances tend to run more generous given the travel.
Territory Manager / BDM
$100k to $130k base + super + car
Key Account Manager
$115k to $145k base + super + car
State Sales Manager
$140k to $175k base + super + car
National Sales Manager
$165k to $210k+ base + super + car
Roles in WA mining and resources corridors, regional QLD and NT typically attract a 10 to 20% premium on base, plus remote allowances.
A full breakdown of the Australian civil and infrastructure market. Who the key players are across concrete, construction chemicals, precast, drainage, reinforcing and formwork. How products get specified and sold. What sales roles look like day to day. Where the growth is. And why good people are hard to find.
Read the full industry profileDeep dives into sales roles, key players and market trends across the sectors I recruit in.
Civil & Infrastructure
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FAQ
If you're hiring a rep who can talk specification with an engineer and commercials with a contractor, or you're that rep and you're tired of explaining what crack injection is to a generalist recruiter, let's talk.