All Things Urban

Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

As the Urban Planning and Design Lead, you will provide strategic direction for our development partner as it relates to urban design and external design teams with a specific focus on the relationship between buildings, the first 40’, public realm, and in collaboration with our landscape design lead and our open space strategy. In this role, you will collaborate with and aggregate the thinking of Google’s Real Estate and Workplace Services (REWS) team, including our Social Infrastructure Director, our Workplace Design Lead, our Amenities teams, and others.

Developing innovative products and services that improve the lives of as many people as possible has been core to Google from the beginning. The Real Estate Investment and Development team is focused on creating inspiring places that enable Google, our employees and communities to thrive. Through thoughtful collaborations and transformational investments, we’re on the front lines of facilitating the next wave of Google’s ground-up developments that embody our culture and inspire a new way of developing places. As an in-house development group, our team’s diversified real estate expertise spans asset and portfolio management, transactions, urban planning and design, entitlements, construction management and district infrastructure.

• Lead master plan principles across all uses. Manage a team of ground plane architects and coordinate to drive the urban design of Google’s vertical clusters.
• Meet development objectives and provide clarity/definition in design roles/responsibilities. Provide strategic direction to our urban design teams around design guidelines.
• Filter between Google and the wider design team and between/among the roster of design professionals. Lead the scheme design externally for the design process and internally to various stakeholders.
• Lead and support a collaborative effort to develop the District level public realm, retail, amenity, and place strategy. Create an operating agreement between Google and its development partner.
• Contribute best practices, civic and urban design thinking, potential place partners, and business models required to remain innovative. Support internal presentations and our external narrative.

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Urban Design, Urban Planning, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12 years of experience executing and managing the design process for large scale, mixed-use projects.
• Experience managing complex urban design teams and multiple architects from master plan through delivery.

Preferred qualifications:

• Understanding of people-first design and ability to drive outcomes from that lens.
• Understanding of what makes cities successful from a place and design perspective.
• Ability to integrate multiple design objectives into cohesive design direction.
• Ability to balance multiple competing design interests and optimize for the best outcome.
• Ability to work collaboratively to drive operational performance from diverse, large scale teams.
• Interest and a vision for urban design and city making.

At Google, we don’t just accept difference—we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

We’re not fully sure whether this role is open to international candidates. If you would need visa sponsorship or work authorisation, we recommend checking directly with the employer before applying.