Managing Principal

Job Description

Job Description

Managing Principal

Schools, campuses, and civic learning places only work when design, budget, and the people who will use them stay in the same conversation. This role owns that conversation from first briefing through occupancy—setting the standard for work that is clear, buildable, and worthy of the communities it serves. You will grow a practice known for educational planning, performance spaces, and places that last.

• Win and lead a defined book of educational and civic work, converting pursuits into signed agreements with healthy fees and clear scope.
• Hold design quality through construction: every major project meets program, sustainability targets, and the client’s operational needs at handover.
• Run the studio’s commercial health—utilization, profitability, and cash—so project teams can focus on the work, not rescue the numbers.
• Build client relationships that produce repeat commissions and referrals without discounting the firm’s judgment.
• Develop principals and project leaders who can run work independently within one planning cycle.
• Set and enforce a project delivery model—programming through construction administration—that reduces rework and claims.
• Represent the practice with owners, districts, and campus leaders so our advice is trusted before a drawing is issued.

You lead a mid-size architecture studio focused on learning environments, interiors, and sustainable design. You report to firm ownership, direct project leaders and discipline leads, and share business development with a small leadership group. You will have authority over staffing on your projects, a pursuit budget, and established tools for design, documentation, and construction administration—not a blank slate and not a bureaucracy.

• Licensed architect with a record of leading complex educational, higher-education, or performing-arts projects from programming through closeout.
• Demonstrated responsibility for fees, schedules, and profit on a multi-project portfolio—not support to someone who did.
• Proven ability to win work with public and institutional clients and to keep those clients through design changes and construction.
• Experience directing teams across architecture, interiors, and construction administration, including hard scope and quality calls.
• Clear written and spoken communication with boards, administrators, and builders.

• Work centered on schools, campuses, and performance spaces—not generic commercial churn.
• A practice that still does the full arc: planning, design, interiors, and construction administration.
• Room to shape how the studio pursues, staffs, and delivers work, with ownership close enough to decide.
• Sustainability treated as a project requirement, not a marketing line.
• A scale large enough to take on significant buildings and small enough that a principal’s judgment still shows in the built result.

If you have led educational work to completion and can carry both the design and the business, apply with two projects you personally directed and the outcomes you own.