Design Leader

NBBJ is an award-winning design firm recognized as a TIME100 Most Influential Company, a Fast Company Most Innovative Architecture Firm and a two-time 2025 AIA National Honor Award recipient. These recognitions reflect our purpose-driven approach that, fueled by ideas and a culture of collaboration, creates healthy buildings, strong communities and a resilient environment. That’s where you come in. With leading clients, diverse colleagues and offices in creative capitals around the globe, a career at NBBJ will inspire you to be extraordinary. You can learn more about our firm, see what it’s like to work here and explore recent projects and ideas at NBBJ.com. Join us to make an impact today!

The role at a glance:

NBBJ is seeking an innovative and strategic Design Leader to join our New York studio.
At NBBJ, our mission is to transform health and well-being through design. As a Design Leader, you will collaborate with some of the world’s most forward-thinking clients to create environments that make a meaningful impact on people’s lives.

We are looking for an ambitious and innovative architectural design professional—someone with a strong record of creative leadership and a passion for shaping dynamic communities, healing spaces, and transformative client experiences. We are seeking a generalist thinker who views all market sectors with enthusiasm to rethink the way we live, work, heal, and inhabit different dimensions of buildings and spaces. Your role will be based in our healthcare studio with a more expansive responsibility to work in other market sectors, influence the evolution of our New York office and firm-wide design direction.

At this moment, this is where design means the most.

In doing so, you will draw on NBBJ’s long-standing experience as a pioneer in healthcare design, from being one of the first architecture firms to adopt evidence-based design and hire full-time clinicians, to introducing international best practices in new markets around the world. Innovation and creativity are at the heart of everything we do. Your career will unfold in a boundary-free, collaborative, and interdisciplinary environment. If you are motivated to improve health and wellbeing through design and continue to build a design team, join us on this exciting journey.

In your new role, you will:

• Energize and inspire forward-thinking, creative design thought leadership in the New York studio and collaborate with studio leaders along the east coast.
• Be a design catalyst, leading the work of other team members, providing mentoring and guidance through an integrated delivery process
• Collaborate with Design Leaders across the firm
• Participate in marketing efforts as a key seller of design ideas at point of sale
• Be a champion for our work to clients and the design community while you simultaneously foster an inspired and creative team
• Develop and execute new and existing client relationships through a deep understanding of client enterprise and needs.
• Develop design concepts through detailed designs, including participating in the production of construction documentation and a strong built work portfolio.
• Discover and apply new ideas to transform past practices and set new design directions.
• Articulate, skillfully engage and communicate with colleagues and clients.
• Seek feedback and adjust behavior to successfully adapt to diverse styles.
• Be a person who loves growing, learning, stretching and recognizes the value of becoming uncomfortable…an unbound thinker.

What You Will Need to Succeed:

• Registered / Licensed Architect (RA)
• Master's degree in architecture from an accredited school
• 15+ years of professional experience as an Architect
• Design experience with Healthcare projects are strongly preferred. Experience in other markets such as Higher Education, S+T, Commercial, Civic or Cultural is also beneficial
• Core and shell experience with sensitivity to the interior design process
• Experience w/ Rhino and Revit
• Appreciate diversity in people, ideas and style
• Able to embrace the potentially opposing demands of our vision: inspired, innovative design
• Be adept at the integration of strategic programming and design
• Curious; a strong communicator; transparent; self-confident; accountable; has a positive attitude
• Be undaunted by ambiguity

The annual base pay range for this role is anticipated to be between $130,000 and $170,000. Actual compensation for successful candidates will be carefully determined based on a number of factors, including their skills, qualifications and experience.

This role requires the individual to be based in the United States.

We believe that all NBBJ employees should love their work. This means not only loving what you do but having pride in your workplace. We strive to be that irresistible place to work by enhancing your employee experience with customized programs and comprehensive benefits. In addition to 100% covered employee healthcare costs and 401k contributions, we offer unique professional development opportunities, volunteer opportunities and access to leading technology and resources to further help you love your work and advance your career.

• NBBJ has been named three times by Fast Company as one of the most innovative architecture firms.
• Founded in 1943, our first office opened over 75 years ago in Seattle, Washington. We now have over 10 office locations around the globe.
• We are a transdisciplinary, cross-practice focused firm with a deep portfolio of Civic & Cultural, Commercial, Corporate, Healthcare, Higher Education, Science and Technology, Sports, and Urban Environment projects. We also have several areas of service expertise including: Architecture, Environmental Graphic Design, Interior Design, Lighting Design, Workplace Consulting and more.
• In the past decade, NBBJ has received more than 300 awards from leading global, national and regional award programs across the business, real estate and design communities.
• We work with 5 of the top global high-tech companies, 14 of the U.S. News and World Report Top Hospitals, and 4 of the top 10 highest-ranked learning institutions.
• Our clients include institutional leaders such as Cambridge University, Google, Samsung, Cleveland Clinic, Tencent, and Stanford University.