Director of Civil Engineering - East Region

Compensation: $160,000 - $215,000 / year

Department: Engineering

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Alta is seeking a dynamic East Regional Director of Engineering to join our team in Minneapolis and lead our growing engineering practice in the East. This is a fantastic opportunity for an engineering leader who believes in the importance of active, multimodal, and sustainable transportation to shape communities while driving business excellence and operational performance.

In this role, you will work with the Engineering Director to provide strategic leadership and operational oversight for our East region engineering teams, driving innovation in sustainable transportation design while fostering a culture of collaboration, professional growth, and excellence. You will be responsible for setting technical and strategic direction for engineering initiatives across our East region of offices, which include Atlanta, Durham, Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Nashville, ensuring our projects create positive impacts on communities nationwide while meeting financial and operational performance standards.

If you are passionate about leading transformational change in transportation engineering while developing talent and advancing organizational excellence, apply with Alta today!

Alta Planning + Design is a sustainable transportation company dedicated to creating active, healthy communities through planning, landscape architecture, engineering, and education/encouragement programs. Alta was founded in 1996 when communities were calling for safer streets for people walking and bicycling as the non‑motorized transportation movement developed into a profession in the United States. We pioneered the field of active transportation, evolving our planning and design work into a visionary global practice that empowers people to live active, healthy lives and gets them to where they need to go.

Our core values and work bring about positive change by creating places that are geared toward moving people rather than cars, connecting community members to daily needs and human experience, and empowering every person to live an active healthy life. As a global leader in mobility innovation for 30 years with over 230 staff, we are dedicated to connecting people to places by working across disciplines and scale to address social justice, safety, and environmental resilience.

• Develop and execute long‑term strategic plans for the East region engineering practice, aligning with company‑wide objectives and market opportunities
• Ensure the East Region meets or exceeds annual and quarterly financial targets, with strong emphasis on achieving Net Service Revenue and EBITDA growth
• Lead the regional engineering organization through periods of growth and change, ensuring operational excellence and cultural alignment
• Champion innovation in active transportation engineering practices and emerging technologies
• Drive a culture of fiscal and business acumen that empowers teams to seek continuous improvement in operational efficiency and financial performance
• Play an active role in the budgeting process, including prioritization of trade‑offs to grow both revenue and earnings

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of engineering professionals, project managers, and technical staff across multiple office locations
• Supervise and evaluate East Region staff, creating clear performance expectations, providing regular feedback, and establishing pathways for career advancement
• Build and maintain a high‑performance culture focused on professional growth, collaboration, and technical excellence
• Recruit, hire, and retain top engineering talent to support regional growth objectives, maintaining forward‑looking hiring plans to fill open roles efficiently
• Foster cross‑disciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing across engineering, planning, landscape architecture, and other practice areas
• Own key performance areas including safety, client engagement, staff development and retention, and cross‑business collaboration
• Maintain staff utilization at or above predetermined…