JOB DESCRIPTION

Assistant Director of Development Services – Zoning & Design Review
City of Fort Worth, Texas

As Fort Worth continues to grow and evolve, the City is investing in leaders who can match pace with performance, leaders who can protect what works while advancing what's next. The City's Development Services Department sits directly in that equation, serving as both the operational gateway for development activity and a strategic platform for shaping Fort Worth's long-term community framework.

This recruitment represents a rare opportunity: a senior leadership role inside a nationally recognized development services organization, now evolving from "exceptional at managing growth" to "exceptional at guiding it."

Department structure and scope: a coordinated development platform

Development Services operates through multiple functional divisions that collectively deliver a coordinated development experience:

• Customer Care
• Development Coordination
• Development Engineering
• Plans Exam & Inspections
• Zoning & Design Review

The role: Zoning & Design Review as the City's "growth-shaping" platform

The Assistant Director of Development Services – Zoning & Design Review is a senior leader who helps set direction, align teams, and ensure decisions are consistent, timely, and strategically grounded. The role is a key part of the Department's leadership team during a period of tremendous growth, strengthening the operational foundation, improving processes, supporting staff, and keeping pace with increasing development volume while maintaining high service standards.

The City is building on a strong foundation and asking the next Assistant Director to help the City Manager's office shift the organization from primarily responding to development pressure to more intentionally guiding growth through proactive planning, area plan development, and alignment of land use decisions with infrastructure and transportation investments.
This Assistant Director will oversee a complex and high-impact portfolio, including:

• Zoning change case management,
• Historic preservation, form-based codes, and downtown design,
• Zoning plan review, urban forestry, and zoning appeals,
• Platting and annexation / ETJ coordination,

What makes this opportunity distinctive

A high-performing department that measures itself

The Strategic Plan includes clear key performance measures and service-level expectations across Zoning & Design Review functions- turnaround times, error reduction, predictable administrative review timelines, and shot-clock compliance. This role will lead in a culture where performance is visible and where teams are expected to continuously improve, not simply maintain.

A portfolio where city-shaping decisions happen daily

Zoning and design review are where community character, economic development, neighborhood stability, and equity considerations meet real projects and real tradeoffs. The next Assistant Director will help ensure the City's decisions are not just efficient but also coherent, aligned with broader policy direction and infrastructure realities.

A "next phase" leadership seat

Fort Worth is recruiting a leader who can operate at two levels simultaneously:

• Operational excellence (cycle time, predictability, customer experience, staff capability)
• Strategic city-building (area plans, code management, growth alignment, implementation discipline, long-term outcomes)

What the City is looking for in the next Assistant Director

Fort Worth is seeking a leader with the presence and practical intelligence to steward high-stakes decisions in public settings, and the discipline to build durable systems behind the scenes.
The City is particularly interested in a leader who brings:

• A proactive, city-shaping orientation—someone who does not simply process growth, but helps guide it with intentionality.
• A strong planning and urban design mindset—understanding how zoning tools, design standards, and area planning can reinforce quality-of-place outcomes and predictable development.
• Credibility with diverse stakeholders—development partners, neighborhood leaders, boards/commissions, and internal alliance departments.
• A workforce-builder's instinct—a commitment to raising capability, training teams, strengthening accountability, and creating resilience through cross-functional knowledge.
• Operational maturity—an ability to protect performance standards while expanding the organization's strategic impact.

This is a role for someone who can be both strategist and operator, equally comfortable with board-facing complexity and internal execution.

Why Fort Worth—and why now

The Assistant Director role has been central to building a strong operational foundation during a period of sustained growth. The next leader will inherit a division that is organized, accountable, and ambitious, now ready to push further into proactive planning and long-term alignment.

For the right leader, this is a chance to do work that matters:

• To help shape one of the country's most dynamic cities,
• Inside a department that measures its performance and invests in its people,
• With a mandate to elevate how growth is guided—not just how it is processed.

Qualifications

Fort Worth is seeking a seasoned municipal leader who brings technical depth in zoning and entitlement systems, credibility in public-facing decision environments, and the ability to translate policy into predictable, high-quality outcomes at scale. The successful candidate will be both a strategic growth-shaper and an operational executive—equally capable of building durable internal systems and navigating complex stakeholder dynamics.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Planning, Urban Planning/Design, Public Administration, Urban Geography, Civil Engineering, or a closely related field.
• Six (6) years of progressively responsible experience in city planning, development services, or a closely related municipal function, including broad exposure to zoning/entitlements, land use regulation, and development review.
• Four (4) years of management or administrative leadership experience, including supervising professional staff and coordinating multi-function work programs.
• Valid Texas driver's license (or ability to obtain upon hire).

Preferred / Highly Desirable Qualifications

• Masters Degree in Planning, Regional Planning, Urban Design or planning related degree strongly preferred.
• A demonstrated record of leading or influencing zoning and land use policy in a high-growth environment, including ordinance interpretation, case management, and code modernization.
• Experience overseeing or partnering closely with urban design, downtown design standards, form-based tools, conservation districts, or historic preservation programs where public process and defensibility are paramount.
• Working knowledge of subdivision/platting and annexation/ETJ coordination, including collaborative workflows with engineering, transportation, utilities, and capital planning partners.
• A history of success improving customer experience and service-level performance (cycle time, predictability, transparency) while maintaining decision quality and public trust.
• Evidence of strong people leadership—developing staff capability, building a leadership bench, implementing training/cross-training, and strengthening accountability in a high-volume environment.
• Professional credentials such as AICP and/or CNU (or comparable design/planning credentials) are valued.