Principal Biologist

Your Opportunity

Grounded in safety, quality, and ethics, Stantec brings together more than 35,000 professionals worldwide who are passionate about solving complex environmental, engineering and design challenges and shaping resilient communities. We believe the best solutions emerge when technical excellence, creativity, diversity, and collaboration come together—and when experienced leaders are empowered to make a lasting impact in the communities they serve.

Stantec is seeking a Principal level Biologist to play a key leadership role in the continued growth of our Los Angeles Metropolitan Market. This is an opportunity for an accomplished consulting biologist to help shape market strategy, expand client relationships, mentor future leaders, and influence how our Natural Resources Assessment and Permitting services are delivered across Southern California.

This role is ideal for someone energized by the opportunity to lead from the front —building teams, strengthening client partnerships, and contributing to some of the region’s most visible and impactful utility, energy, infrastructure, and public sector programs.

Why This Role at Stantec

As a Principal Biologist, you will join a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary team and serve as both a technical leader and market champion. You will have the opportunity to:

• Help grow and shape the Los Angeles Metropolitan Market, aligning technical excellence with strategic business growth.
• Work alongside experts across environmental sciences, engineering, planning, and design on complex, high profile projects.
• Recruit, mentor and develop talent, helping build a strong and sustainable Natural Resources practice.
• Continue to learn, innovate, and expand your professional influence, supported by regional and global networks of expertise.

This role offers a platform for leadership, growth, and impact, with the ability to shape not only projects—but people, programs, and the future of our Southern California practice.

What You Will Do

As a Principal Biologist, you will help lead, grow, and inspire a dynamic team while advancing Stantec’s presence in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Market. Your responsibilities will include:

• Providing strategic and technical leadership to multidisciplinary teams delivering natural resource, permitting, and environmental compliance projects.
• Serving as a trusted advisor to staff, clients and regulatory agencies, proactively identifying risks, mitigation, opportunities, and solutions.
• Shaping and expanding key client programs, particularly within utility, energy, infrastructure, and public sector markets.
• Anticipating emerging technical and regulatory challenges and translating insight into proactive strategies that address evolving market, business, regulatory, risk, and economic drivers.
• Promoting new ideas and initiatives, fostering an environment that encourages creativity, innovation, and continuous improvement across teams, projects and programs.
• Leading and contributing to business development efforts, including networking, proposal development, scoping, budgeting, risk management, and relationship building.
• Mentoring and supporting staff through technical guidance, professional development, recruitment, and succession planning.
• Overseeing biological fieldwork, regulatory strategy, and CEQA/NEPA analyses, ensuring high quality, defensible deliverables.
• Collaborating across teams to share best practices, innovate delivery approaches, and support continuous improvement.
• Manage tasks and projects in accordance with approved scopes of work, delivering high quality reports on schedule and within budget, while ensuring consistency with Stantec’s Project Management Framework and ISO certified Integrated Management System (IMS).
• Championing Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) policies and fostering a culture of safety, support, and accountability.

This role is primarily office based, with limited fieldwork opportunities, and may require occasional overnight travel within and outside of Southern California, as project needs dictate

The role has a target 65–75% direct project utilization, balancing project delivery with leadership, mentorship, and growth activities.

Your Capabilities and Credentials

You are an accomplished consulting biologist and leader with 15+ years of progressive experience delivering complex projects and guiding teams, clients, and regulatory processes. You bring a balance of technical depth, strategic thinking, and relationship building, and are motivated by opportunities to grow people, programs, and markets.

Key qualifications include:

• Demonstrated excellence in client engage