Regional Practice Area Leader - Urban Design

Your Role

Gensler’s San Francisco Office is looking for a dynamic and diversely-talented Urban Design Practice Area Leader to lead a growing and diverse practice. You are adept at business development while also taking on a leadership role on projects. Working collaboratively within the region and Gensler network, you will help shape how we get the work, lead the dialogue on design innovation, and help mentor the next generation of design professionals in strategy, urban design, and planning.

This role is a project leader, strategy creator, design thinker, client advocate, and relationship steward. You must love to push new ideas, be passionate about design, and get excited about managing diverse projects with extremely talented creatives and exciting clients from across all industry segments. As a design firm, Gensler is committed to being client-first, diverse, exploratory and sustainably-minded. In this position, you will join a highly creative team dedicated to innovative problem-solving and design excellence.

This is an excellent opportunity for a practice builder with a diverse portfolio of work to be part of a client-interfacing team and enjoy utilizing business development skills and acumen to capture clients and to deliver great projects!

For more information about Gensler and our Cities + Urban Design Practice, please visit: 

Firm Profile | Gensler 

Cities & Urban Design | Expertise | Gensler 

Design Forecast 2022: Cities & Urban Design | Gensler 

Designing the Cities of the Future | Gensler 

What You Will Do

You will provide leadership to create strong, cutting-edge, and innovative design concepts for a range of planning and urban design project types, including mixed-use, retail, residential, commercial, education, land uses, and transit oriented development. You will be:

• Responsible for building and leading the NW Region Cities & Urban Design Practice Area

• Lead accounts and projects from business development presentations through strategy, design, and delivery

• Lead and build project teams, ensuring the highest quality of work

• Develop and mentor each team member to the best of each individual’s talent

• Motivate, inspire and push thinking of design teams

• Create coherent and compelling client presentations

• Apply sustainable planning and design principles

• Interface with multiple other Gensler practices, including but not limited to retail, mixed use, hospitality, sports & entertainment, workplace, and education

• Manage multiple client relationships and develop strategic positioning for clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies

• Lead client presentations to executive-level audiences

• Initiate and close business development opportunities

• Be accountable for client and project performance metrics

Your Qualifications

• Minimum of 15+ years of experience with urban design and master planning projects

• Bachelors or Masters Degree in Urban Design and/or Bachelors or Masters Degree in Architecture

• Outstanding ability to verbally and graphically communicate design concepts

• Knowledge of urban planning, zoning, CEQA, entitlements and technical issues

• Must possess deep knowledge of local agencies and key relationships within those agencies

• Proficiency in Revit, MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite (Rhino and Sketchup is preferred but not required)

• Strategic thinking and ability to position clients with strong rational and conceptual thinking

• Business development experience, including proposal writing, client interviews and closing deals

• Extensive experience leading design teams

• Excellent storytelling and writing capabilities; analytical, problem-solving and communication skills

• History of excellent client relationships

• Project ma