Principal, Sustainable Building Design and Decarbonization

About the Role

Join one of the transportation sector’s most diverse and innovative engineering teams. The Port Authority’s airports, ports, ferries, tunnels, bridges, bus terminals and rail transportation systems are among the region’s most important transportation facilities. As the first U.S. transportation agency to set a net‑zero target for all greenhouse gas emissions, the Port Authority is pursuing a variety of ambitious decarbonization and climate resilience initiatives.

This position is located at 4 World Trade Center in NYC.

The Senior Specialist ("Specialist"), Sustainable Building Design and Decarbonization will work under the supervision of the Senior Program Manager, Sustainable Design and Construction and will be a key contributor to ongoing and anticipated critical agency net‑zero initiatives. This includes playing a key role in developing and implementing the Engineering Department’s energy decarbonization program strategy. The Specialist will be responsible for program coordination and day‑to‑day program oversight focused on energy resilience and decarbonization.

In addition to decarbonization, the Specialist will also serve as a people manager, Subject Matter Expert, task lead, or project manager for a wide variety of PA Capital Projects, initiatives, pilots, guideline/standard updates, and more. Port Authority facilities cover a wide variety of occupancy types including retail, hospitality, commercial offices, airport terminals and lounges, aviation hangars, transportation terminals, warehouses, operations centers, and substations.

The Specialist’s duties may include, but are not limited to:

• Program oversight for Facility‑specific assessments and strategic planning exercises focused on energy resilience and decarbonization, management of internal and/or consultant teams.
• Participate in energy management and decarbonization programs, which may include data collection, benchmarking, Building Energy Modeling (BEM), energy audits, and refrigerant upgrades, for example.
• Contribute to the development and continuing evolution of energy resilience and decarbonization resources, including guidelines, manuals, standards, specifications, tools, and job aids.
• Lead or support collaboration across the Engineering Department, with other units of the Authority, with the Authority’s tenants and partners, with utilities, and with industry.
• Coordinate the development and deployment of training programs to increase the technical capacity of Port Authority staff.
• Collaborate with academic and industry partners and advisors to advance applied research and innovation initiatives related to energy resilience and decarbonization.
• Provide thorough and timely reporting on program and project statuses, including development and maintenance of dashboards and creation of PowerPoint decks and written reports.
• Perform deadline‑driven technical audit and review services for sustainable design and construction, including analyzing and reviewing drawings, calculations, specifications, LEED documentation, reports and studies for compliance with PA standards, and preparation of review comments.
• Work with agency design teams, consultants, and tenants and their design teams (Architects/Engineers of Record) to successfully implement the agency’s Sustainable Design Guidelines and related standards, which may include meeting with internal and external partners to provide project‑specific guidance, discussing review comments, and resolving issues constructively and in a timely manner.
• Track project status and performance metrics; reporting out at bi‑monthly meetings and contributing to unit performance reports.
• Support updates to the Authority's guidelines, manuals, bulletins, specifications, and implementation tools for sustainable and resilient design and construction.
• Lead or participate in collaborations, initiatives, and/or pilots to advance agency and industry sustainability and resilience practices.
• Supervise junior staff in the development of technical work; ensure proper coordination with all appropriate internal and external stakeholders; perform quality control review; monitor work progress, especially…