Senior Planner

The City of Bellevue is rapidly maturing into a tech-centric, diverse, metropolitan city within the Central Puget Sound

Region. The Community Development Department is looking to fill the Senior Planner/Urban Designer position in the Strategic Planning Team with a creative, forward-thinking individual to help us shape and catalyze positive change. The department’s vision is to secure Bellevue’s future as a livable, inspiring, vibrant and equitable community.

The Strategic Planning Team works on a range of planning initiatives, including station area plans, urban infill development, and major placemaking features such as the development of the Civic Center and the continuing integration of the Bellevue Grand Connection. Collaboration, high level critical thinking, and organization is key to being successful in this position and organization. The Senior Planner/Urban Designer plays a primary role in orchestrating the planning and urban design aspects of the above, with the following broad set of responsibilities:

• Provide project management expertise for large, complex initiatives.
• Help strategize spatial configurations that further the city’s development aspirations.
• Play a prominent role in representing design-based ideas for easy comprehension by city council, board and commissions, other departments, and stakeholders.
• Support the alignment of policy, regulation, and economic development goals with practical and suitable design documentation.
• Provide visual translations of the implications of development concepts.
• Identify existing typologies and generate new or hybrid prototypes for housing, retail and commercial structures, and configurations.
• Translate and test various economic constraints, policies and regulations with coordinated feasibility evaluations.
• Serve on various regional committees and represent Bellevue.
• Project manage and advance Comprehensive Plan Policy Amendments
• Generate reports and analysis on subjects such as TOD, placemaking, and design
• Provide inter-departmental support as a subject matter expert in design, transit oriented development, and placemaking.
• Organize and lead public engagement events related to assigned projects and support other public engagement events that are being led by different inter-department teams.
• Create, maintain, and manage various consultant contracts.

• Expert knowledge of all the phases of project management.
• Ability to develop, manage, and monitor work programs for complex and/or controversial projects with a focus on addressing City Council priorities.
• Skilled in conducting complex technical work involving transit-oriented development, placemaking, urban design, site planning, and spatial analysis.
• Understanding of how buildings, streets, parks and other cityscape components work individually and together (i.e. assembled).
• Ability to administer and maintain budgets, agreements and contracts with public agencies and consultants.
• Ability to communicate effectively with peers, elected and appointed officials, and other stakeholders in areas of expertise.
• Ability to build partnerships with constituencies on controversial complex planning and design issues and, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of potential project impacts.
• Ability to prepare planning reports with supporting data and develop recommendations for various land use and urban development proposals.
• Familiarity with municipal planning and processes

• Graduation from an accredited four-year university in urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, environmental studies, urban geography, or closely related field. A master’s degree is preferred.
• Five or more years of progressively responsible experience as an urban designer, planner, or design professional. This experience could be in any order and in any allied discipline.
• Alternatively, a clear equivalent combination of education, experience, and training that provides the required mix of knowledge, skills and abilities.
• Certification as a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) is preferred.

The physical demands and work environment described here…