Job Description
Turner & Townsend seeks an experienced Project Architect / Design / Project Manager to help build a Design Standards Studio focused on turning program requirements into real, usable design standards that work in the field. This role sits at the center of that effort. You’ll act as the design architect, translating evolving requirements into scalable spatial standards, layouts, and templates — and then report results to team leads for approval, followed by pressure-testing those standards through active projects.
This is not a traditional project management role. You won’t just track projects—you will shape how they are designed, built, and continuously improved. You’ll work directly with operations, product teams, other SMEs, and architects to ensure standards support real workflows, not just ideal conditions.
Expect ambiguity. Expect iteration. Expect to build the system while using it.
Responsibilities:
- Champion a high design bar by ensuring spatial standards, documentation, and playbooks possess a sharp, cohesive, and sophisticated aesthetic.
- Lead the visual communication strategy for design systems, ensuring all deliverables (playbooks, diagrams, and templates) are not only functional but visually compelling.
- Translate program requirements into clear, buildable spatial standards, layouts, and details
- Develop and refine system-level design concepts, diagrams, and playbooks (typologies, adjacencies, infrastructure logic)
- Oversee project architects to ensure designs align with standards while adapting to real-world constraints
- Partner closely with operations, product, SMEs, and documentation teams to align design decisions with operational workflows
- Respond quickly to incoming issues (e.g., design gaps, prototype failures, design blockers) and drive resolution across cross-functional teams
- Review layouts and drawings (Revit, AutoCAD, Bluebeam) and provide direct, actionable design feedback
- Bridge the gap between high-level brand identity and physical reality, ensuring spatial environments consistently reinforce and elevate the brand's core values.
- Oversee the integration of experiential branding elements into architectural details to ensure a cohesive, branded user experience.
- Work with team leads to identify gaps in existing standards and propose improvements based on project learnings and field feedback
- Attend project milestones (including punch walks) to observe how designs perform in reality
- Provide infrastructure and layout solutions to unblock client or site-specific challenges
- Provide expertise in cost control, value engineering, and constructability guidance where required
- Provide technical support to owners, architects, general contractors, and regional stakeholders
- Support retrofit and implementation efforts where standards need to be adapted to existing conditions
- Contribute to building and evolving design systems, not just individual projects
- SOX control responsibilities may be part of this role, which are to be adhered to where applicable. Required Experience:
- Licensed and/or NCARB certified
- Master’s degree in Architecture
- 5–8+ years of experience in architectural design and production
- Strong architectural background with hands-on production experience (ability to develop details and written specifications, not purely conceptual design)
- Experience developing or working with design standards, prototypes, or repeatable systems
- Ability to read, review, and actively redline drawings
- Experience collaborating across disciplines (architecture, operations, engineering, product teams, both internal and external)
- Ability to translate ambiguous inputs into clear, actionable design direction
- Proven ability to take concepts or early-stage designs and make them executable in real-world environments
- Strong organizational and management skills – collaborating across multiple disciplines (engineering, operations, vendors, facilities, etc.)
- Strong requirements gathering and problem-solving skills
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills
- Familiarity with permitting, codes, and compliance considerations
- Experience reviewing and providing QA/QC of design drawings, technical documents, and/or product specifications
- Experience developing and publishing Revit master files/templates/standards
- Proficiency in Revit, AutoCAD, Bluebeam Revu, and Microsoft 365 and/or Google Workspace products, as well as digital whiteboard collaboration tools (i.e., Miro, Mural, etc.) Preferred Experience:
- Strong graphic design sensibility with a proven ability to create polished, high-fidelity design documentation and visual systems.
- Experience elevating technical architectural outputs into sophisticated, A/E design directive presentation materials.
- Demonstrated experience translating brand guidelines into physical architectural concepts and built environments.
- Success in managing the intersection of interior architecture and brand strategy to deliver immersive, consistent spatial experiences.
- Experience in R&D, prototyping, or iterative design environments – vetting and validating products against the client standards, codes, etc.
- Experience with vendor and external partner management
- Exposure to large-scale rollouts, multi-site programs, or retrofit implementations
- Experience creating diagrams, systems graphics, or playbook documentation
- Portfolio demonstrating built work and systems thinking
- Experience working in ambiguous or early-stage programs
- Proficiency with Asana
Qualifications
- Licensed and/or NCARB certified
- Master’s degree in Architecture
- 5–8+ years of experience in architectural design and production
- Strong architectural background with hands-on production experience (ability to develop details and written specifications, not purely conceptual design)
- Experience developing or working with design standards, prototypes, or repeatable systems
- Ability to read, review, and actively redline drawings
- Experience collaborating across disciplines (architecture, operations, engineering, product teams, both internal and external)
- Ability to translate ambiguous inputs into clear, actionable design direction
- Proven ability to take concepts or early-stage designs and make them executable in real-world environments
- Strong organizational and management skills – collaborating across multiple disciplines (engineering, operations, vendors, facilities, etc.)
- Strong requirements gathering and problem-solving skills
- Excellent collaboration and communication skills
- Familiarity with permitting, codes, and compliance considerations
- Experience reviewing and providing QA/QC of design drawings, technical documents, and/or product specifications
- Experience developing and publishing Revit master files/templates/standards
- Proficiency in Revit, AutoCAD, Bluebeam Revu, and Microsoft 365 and/or Google Workspace products, as well as digital whiteboard collaboration tools (i.e., Miro, Mural, etc.)
Company Description
Turner & Townsend is a global professional services company with over 22,000 people in more than 60 countries. Working with our clients across real estate, infrastructure, energy and natural resources, we transform together delivering outcomes that improve people’s lives. Working in partnership makes it possible to deliver the world’s most impactful projects and programmes as we turn challenge into opportunity and complexity into success.
Our capabilities include programme, project, cost, asset and commercial management, controls and performance, procurement and supply chain, net zero and digital solutions. We are majority-owned by CBRE Group, Inc., the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, with our partners holding a significant minority interest.
Turner & Townsend and CBRE work together to provide clients with the premier programme, project and cost management offering in markets around the world.