Coastal Resilience Leader

Joining Arup Arup is seeking a Coastal Resilience Leader to grow and lead our coastal resilience service on the West Coast. This is one of the most visible resilience leadership roles in our Americas region: you will set market strategy, grow key accounts, and direct delivery across California, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawai'i, and the broader Western U.S., while helping shape how Arup grows coastal resilience across other US regions, Canada, and Latin America.

This is a market leadership role that combines business development, client leadership, technical credibility, and multidisciplinary delivery for ports, transportation agencies, municipalities, utilities, campuses, waterfront districts, tribal governments, military sites, airports, regional agencies, and other infrastructure owners. The ideal candidate is a recognized, trusted advisor with established relationships across California and the West Coast, deep expertise in shoreline resilience, and a proven record of winning and delivering complex climate adaptation, coastal and riverine flood risk, and resilient infrastructure projects.

The Opportunity:

A strong and growing portfolio of work. You will step into an active portfolio of shoreline resilience and adaptation projects, with a healthy pipeline of future work.  A multidisciplinary team ready to deliver. You will lead an established, multidisciplinary team of resilience planners, engineers, and scientists. You will also draw on our water, transportation, civil infrastructure, geotechnical, environmental, sustainability, planning, economics, digital, advisory, permitting, and community engagement capabilities, coordinated into a single offering for clients.

Backed by global leadership. Coastal resilience is a named priority growth area under Arup’s global strategy. You will have the sponsorship, the peer network, and the resources of Arup’s global coastal and water practices to support growth of the service.  Planning through implementation. Arup is uniquely positioned to carry clients from vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning into funded, designed, permitted, and delivered projects.

A central ambition of this role is to build that bridge, and the design capability that goes with it.

What you will do:

Set the vision. Define and drive our West Region coastal resilience growth strategy: the priority locations, client accounts, funding sources, and markets where Arup can make the greatest difference, and connect it to our wider Americas ambitions.  Lead the portfolio. Serve as Project Director on major coastal adaptation, waterfront, and infrastructure resilience programs, with accountability for technical excellence, client satisfaction, and commercial performance.  

Be a trusted advisor. Build executive-level relationships with ports, waterfront cities, transportation agencies, utilities, tribal governments, campuses, and regional agencies. Engage clients early, helping shape programs, funding strategies, and procurement pathways before they reach the market.  Win the work that matters. Lead capture planning, strategic teaming, pursuit strategy, and interviews, converting market intelligence and client relationships into landmark projects and sustained revenue growth.

Provide senior technical leadership. Guide work across multi-hazard risk and resilience including sea level rise, coastal and riverine flooding, storm surge, atmospheric rivers, compound flooding, groundwater rise, tsunami exposure, wildfire-related watershed impacts, extreme heat, drought, and seismic risk, as well as shoreline adaptation, nature-based and hybrid solutions, adaptation pathways, and climate-informed infrastructure design.

Connect resilience to capital. Link client needs to federal,…