Assistant Director, Capital Project Sponsorship, Public Realm

About the role

Transportation Planning and Management (TPM) is responsible for the safe, efficient, and environmentally responsible movement of people and goods on the City's streets, supporting the larger goals of economic and social vitality for people living, working, and doing business in New York City. The Division's responsibilities include planning, street design, curb management, technical analysis, signs, transit development, freight mobility and markings, ensuring the safety of motor vehicle occupants, pedestrians, and cyclists.

The Office of Livable Streets (OLS) is tasked with prioritizing strategic planning, community engagement, research, policy, design, implementation, and long-term management. Their goal is to create streets that are livable, supporting safety, accessibility, inclusion, resiliency, active modes, community cohesion, and economic vitality citywide.

Additionally, they aim to enhance New York City's pedestrian, bicycle, and micromobility networks, providing comfortable, connected, green, and reliable transportation options across the five boroughs. They place special emphasis on Priority Investment Areas, mode shift, and reimagining streets.

The office also develops innovative new programs, design typologies, project delivery, and analysis tools to meet the demands of a rapidly changing population with evolving needs and technologies.

The Public Realm Unit, working closely with other TPM units, is responsible for engaging New Yorkers to reimagine and utilize their city streets as public space and oversees the development of programs, policies, projects, and management tools to elevate the public realm experience for its primary user - the pedestrian., Through initiatives and programs ranging from the Pedestrian Mobility Plan, Public Space Programming, the Public Space Equity Program, Open Streets, Super Sidewalks, Street Seats, Complex Intersections, Shared Streets and Plazas, the Public Realm Unit creates vibrant and inclusive spaces that improve safety, accessibility, and walkability while enhancing commerce, community, and culture throughout New York City.

Reporting to the Director of Public Realm Design, the Assistant Director of Capital Project Sponsorship will support and manage the unit's capital portfolio of citywide public realm street reconstruction projects that include comprehensive pedestrianization enhancements, shared streets, and plazas.

In this role, the candidate will provide vision and direction for the citywide planning, prioritization, outreach, and management of long-term projects, capital project policy and design considerations, and portfolio mapping and tracking at the neighborhood scale citywide.

The chosen candidate will also work with other groups at NYC DOT including Capital Program Management and other planning teams with capital portfolios, including Transit Development. The chosen candidate will also work with NYC Department of Design and Construction, NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, and NYC Economic Development Corporation.

Responsibilities associated with this role include supervising junior to mid-level staff, managing the capital portfolio and tracking systems; developing funding requests and grant applications, developing outreach plans and conducting outreach including public presentations, and presenting planning initiatives to senior leadership.

The candidate will develop detailed proposed street designs that rebalance existing streets to integrate bicycle facilities, pedestrian improvements, and traffic calming to enhance safety for all street users. The candidate will create comprehensive AutoCAD drawings showing vehicle and bike lane configurations, intersection treatments, curb alignments, roadway dimensions, vertical elements, and pavement markings.

The candidate will develop and review Synchro traffic models to evaluate intersection capacity, delay, and level of service, ensuring analyses support safe and efficient multimodal street designs. The candidate will review and quality-check drawings produced by junior staff and consultants. The candidate will manage multiple concurrent design projects and prioritize work to meet critical deadlines.

The candidate will coordinate with other DOT divisions, including Geometric Design, Borough Engineering, and Traffic Signals, to ensure design consistency, comfortable advocating for best practices and emerging designs that support micromobility. The candidate will conduct site visits and field measurements to verify existing conditions and inform design decisions.

The candidate will prepare design presentations and graphics for community meetings, stakeholder engagement, and internal coordination. The candidate will ensure all designs comply with AASHTO, MUTCD, and NYC DOT standards. The candidate will support junior staff training and technical development.

Qualifications & Requirements

• A master's degree from an accredited college or university in city planning, urban planning, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, transportation engineering, public administration, economic development or a related field; or
• A baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university and one year of satisfactory full-time experience in city planning such as in the review and development of housing, transportation, environmental, and city-owned land planning projects; or
• A satisfactory combination of education and/or experience that is equivalent to "1" above. Graduate education in city planning, urban planning, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, transportation engineering, public administration, economic development or related fields may be substituted for experience on the basis of 30 graduate semester credits from an accredited college or university for one year of experience. However, all candidates must have a baccalaureate degree.
• To be eligible for placement in Assignment Level III, individuals must have, after meeting the minimum requirements, two additional years of professional experience as described in "2" above.