Director of Facilities and Engineering

The Director of Facilities and Engineering is a senior strategic, operational, and technical leader responsible for the safe, reliable, efficient, and cost-effective operation of the Museum’s physical facilities, engineering services, and critical building infrastructure. This role provides leadership for facilities operations and engineering teams while ensuring that building systems, maintenance programs, capital strategies, vendor services, and emergency-response capabilities support the Museum’s mission, visitor experience, staff needs, collections stewardship, exhibitions, programs, and long-term institutional resilience.

The Director of Facilities and Engineering leads the planning, management, and continuous improvement of building operations, engineering performance, mechanical and electrical infrastructure, life-safety systems, preventive and predictive maintenance, energy management, regulatory compliance, and daily facilities upkeep. The ideal candidate brings deep technical knowledge of complex institutional building systems, strong people leadership, disciplined financial and project-management skills, and the ability to translate engineering data, facility conditions, and operational priorities into sound short- and long-range decisions.

Provide strategic, technical, and day-to-day leadership for the Facilities and Engineering functions, ensuring safe, reliable, responsive, sustainable, and cost-effective operation of the Museum’s buildings, infrastructure, and critical systems across the full facilities portfolio.

Direct engineering operations, including work-order prioritization, preventive and predictive maintenance, equipment troubleshooting, system repairs, shutdown planning, inspections, emergency response, and urgent building conditions, with a focus on reliability, asset life, risk reduction, operational continuity, and service quality.

Lead, supervise, and develop engineering personnel and facilities staff by establishing clear technical standards, service expectations, accountability measures, coverage models, training priorities, and escalation protocols for normal operations, exhibitions, special events, emergencies, and after-hours needs.

Ensure expert oversight of HVAC, mechanical, electrical distribution, plumbing, fire/life-safety, building automation, vertical transportation, security, and other facility infrastructure, including clear documentation of procedures, set points, recurring issues, system dependencies, and maintenance requirements.

Lead root-cause analysis for system failures, recurring deficiencies, comfort or environmental concerns, and equipment reliability issues; implement corrective and preventive actions that reduce downtime, strengthen resilience, improve occupant conditions, and support collection-sensitive environments.

Partner with Curatorial, Exhibitions, Security, Visitor Experience, IT, and other departments to coordinate engineering needs for gallery conditions, public operations, installations, special programs, construction activity, and business continuity.

Oversee engineering-related vendor and contractor work, including service quality, safety practices, scheduling, access coordination, maintenance documentation, warranty follow-up, and compliance with Museum standards.

Use performance data from CMMS, BMS, inspections, utility trends, and staff observations to monitor building conditions, evaluate maintenance effectiveness, identify risks and resource needs, strengthen preventive maintenance completion, and inform capital planning recommendations.

Ensure facilities are maintained in a safe, clean, functional, professional, and mission-ready condition, with engineering services…