Managing Director - W1384

About the Organization

Summit Search Group has been retained by a well-established Architecture and Urban Planning Firm in Winnipeg on the recruitment of a Managing Director. The firm has earned a strong reputation across the region for the quality of its design work and the depth of its relationships with public and private clients. Its portfolio ranges from private residential commissions to large-scale public landscapes, and includes parks, trails, and open space projects, municipal planning and policy work, and community engagement programs for major institutional clients.

The practice is home to a technically gifted, close-knit team of senior designers and planners who care deeply about their craft and about the communities they serve. Demand for the firm’s work is steady, its reputation is excellent, and its people are proud of what they build. The organization now looks to formalize how it is led and to bring dedicated business leadership to a practice whose creative strength has always been its foundation.

The Opportunity

This is the senior-most role in the practice, and a rare one in the Winnipeg market. The Managing Director takes full ownership of the firm as a business, with real autonomy over direction, structure, and results, and complete accountability for profit and loss. Where leaders at larger national firms often run a department within a corporate structure, this role runs the whole enterprise, shaping its strategy, its culture, and its next generation of leaders.

The incoming leader will work alongside a talented group of principals and design professionals, earning their confidence, strengthening how decisions get made, and bringing greater commercial discipline to how projects are scoped, priced, tracked, and delivered. There is meaningful design work ahead: shaping the firm’s organizational structure in partnership with the team, putting a newly developed strategic plan into motion, and building a clear path for emerging leaders. A thoughtful ramp-up is built in, so the right person can learn the business and build relationships before the real work begins. This role is based in the Winnipeg office, five days a week, with periodic travel to a satellite location.

Key Responsibilities

• Run the practice as a self-directed business, setting priorities, owning financial results, and reporting at a high level to ownership on a quarterly basis.
• Lead, coach, and develop a group of senior principals, fostering alignment and shared accountability, addressing difficult conversations directly and respectfully, and cultivating the next generation of firm leadership.
• Take over the full range of people leadership, including compensation reviews, performance conversations, workforce planning, and the retention and engagement of a talented professional team.
• Instill financial discipline across the practice, including utilization and chargeability, project pricing and margins, and rigorous tracking of scope and change, so that decisions are guided by sound numbers as well as sound design judgment.
• Co-design the firm’s organizational structure with the leadership team, and lead execution of the new strategic plan across the practice.
• Support senior-level business development alongside the principals who lead client relationships, represent the firm in the community, and provide a light-touch, growth-minded presence for the satellite office.

Qualifications

• A background in architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, planning, land development, or a closely related design and consulting field, with enough depth in the industry to earn the respect of senior technical professionals.
• A proven record of building teams and leading collaboratively, paired with the confidence to set direction and make decisions when the situation calls for it.
• Demonstrated comfort with hard conversations and conflict resolution, with the interpersonal maturity to guide experienced, long-tenured professionals through change.
• Strong business and financial acumen, including hands-on experience with P&L ownership, utilization, project pricing, and margin management in a project-based professional services environment.
• The ability to win work, build relationships with clients and partners, and represent the firm credibly within the Winnipeg business and design community.
• Winnipeg-based, with the ability to work on site five days a week; leaders currently running practices at larger firms who are seeking genuine autonomy are encouraged to apply.

For more information or to submit your resume, please reach out to Matt Erhard at Summit Search Group, [email protected].

Summit Search Group has a strong commitment to Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. We strive for continuous development, modeling inclusive behaviors and proactively managing bias throughout our process.