Associate Campus Planner/Urban Designer

We are an integrated design firm with a promise to elevate the human experience through design. This fuels the work we do around the world and inspires our mission to improve the lives of our clients, our communities, and our planet. If this sparks your interest, you’re in the right place.

The best integrated design firm in the world has an opening for an Associate Campus Planner/Urban Designer. DLR Group operates within a hybrid work model, supporting flexibility between office time and work from home.

Position Summary:

As part of DLR Group, this individual will be an important part of our integrated design process and will engage in a well-rounded seasonal position providing exposure to all elements of the campus planning and design process. This is a fantastic opportunity to grow, learn and contribute your design voice to our brand promise of Elevating the Human Experience. This position will assist our national Higher Education Campus Planning Studio on campus planning projects.

As a member of our national Higher Education Campus Planning Studio, you will support stakeholder engagement meetings, create analysis diagrams and illustrative plans, write narratives, and develop reports that explain recommendations and capital planning for facilities, open space, and infrastructure. As part of our integrated planning practice, you will assist the Campus Planning team in developing, updating, and promoting DLR Group firmwide protocols and standards.

If you are collaborative and client-oriented, with a strategic mindset that enjoys translating scales between the campus user, the institution, and the region, this might be the position for you.

Position Responsibilities:

• Demonstrates energy, enthusiasm, creativity, and highly disciplined work ethic.
• Actively participates as a member of our Higher Education Campus Planning studio with the ability to work across multiple time zones
• Generates sophisticated planning and design ideas, conducts research and collects data, identifies relevant precedents, envisions and develops analysis diagrams, rendered site plans, and contributes to the creation of graphics and visuals.
• Effectively applies DLR Group protocols on campus planning, file management, planning, and design processes, and quality control standards for all work products and deliverables.
• Demonstrates a strong conceptual design ability, a solid professional planning acumen, and can meaningfully contribute to projects involving complex sites at a variety of scales and in widely divergent social, environmental, and geographic contexts; integrates interdisciplinary criteria to effectively advance the planning and urban design aspects of complex projects.
• Demonstrates an understanding of planning and urban design concepts, building typologies, critical dimensions, utility and infrastructure systems, land development imperatives and planning /zoning codes, phasing considerations, and implementation techniques.
• Actively participates in campus and community engagement exercises, and data gathering.
• Manages time and workload to meet project task deadlines and commitments with interaction and direction from project leaders and other team members.
• Create reports and presentations that meet client requirements for brand, content, schedule, and budget.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Professional Degree in Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, or Urban Design.
• 3 to 5 years of professional experience; professional licensure process is in progress in planning, architecture, and/or landscape architecture.
• Experience and interest in campus planning and demonstrated facility working in a fast-paced and intensely collaborative professional environment.
• Exhibits initiative, process innovation, problem-solving, and decision-making quality with high attention to detail, precision, and accuracy at a project component level.
• Actively collaborates at a project and consultant team level by developing, communicating, and critically and constructively evaluating ideas.
• Effectively communicates with project team members and consultants through timely and appropriate written, oral, and visual means.
• Demonstrates significant capacity and a high level of proficiency in modeling graphic software such as Autodesk, GIS, Rhino, Grasshopper, Enscape, Lumion, as well as Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft Office.
• Possess exceptional written, verbal, and graphic communication skills.
• Must be eligible to work in the United States without need for work visa or residency sponsorship.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Advanced Degree in Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, or Urban Design.
• Additional complementary studies or degrees in design, analytics, or arts and sciences
• Experience with higher education issues, trends, and facilities.
• Understanding of integrated planning for higher education.
• Proficient Autodesk Revit user.
• Interest in strengthening campus sustainability/resiliency, equity/diversity, and town/gown partnerships.

DLR Group is an integrated design firm delivering architecture, engineering, interiors, planning, and building optimization for new builds, renovations, and adaptive reuse projects.

We are 100% employee-owned: every employee is literally invested in our clients’ success. At the core of our firm are interdisciplinary teams engaged in every step of project lifecycles. Our teams champion true collaboration, open information sharing, shared risk and reward, value-based decision making, and proficient use of technology to deliver exceptional design. We are pursuing the goals of the 2030 Challenge, the ME2040, and the SE2050, and are an initial signatory of the China Accord and the AIA 2030 Commitment.

Our comprehensive Benefits at DLR Group include: medical, dental, vision, disability, wellness programs, flex spending, paid holidays, and paid time off. We also offer a 401k, employee stock ownership, and bonus opportunities. Compensation considerations are based on location, experience, and skills. The potential pay range for this role is $55,000 - $75,000.

Through our values – commitment, creativity, environmental stewardship, fun, integrity, ownership, sharing, teamwork – we elevate the human experience through design, together.

We are proud to be an EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V.