JOB DESCRIPTION

Principal Planner and Manager (Remote)

Program Coordination, Grant Administration & Technical Writing · Urban Design 4 Health

Join Urban Design 4 Health (www.ud4h.com), a leading-edge, international consulting firm established 30 years ago. UD4H is the pioneer in assessing built environment impacts on health and coined the term “walkability” in the early 1990s. UD4H remains at the forefront of this emerging field by conducting original, high-profile work developing and applying evidence-based software tools and monetizing the health impacts of the built environment.  UD4H is engaged in transportation, land use, public health, and smart growth planning. Our internationally recognized work assesses how urban planning influences travel choice, air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental justice, social equity, and a wide range of public health outcomes.

UD4H has been awarded a wide range of groundbreaking projects for federal, state, regional, and local governments, foundations, and private sector clients — including the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and major private-sector partners. We have created longitudinal, national built, natural, and social surveillance data sets for the entire United States including the smart location database, conducted research that led to WalkScore, and published over 200 peer-reviewed articles documenting methods and creating new evidence connecting planning and health.

We are seeking a Principal Planner and Project Manager with organizational and management capabilities; along with significant analytical, presentation, and communication skills.  This individual will co-manage a large multi-year effort that involves the advancement, development, and application of a software tool portfolio. This person will play a central role across multiple active UD4H projects — managing schedules, deliverables, team communication, and day-to-day coordination — including grant administration for a major multi-year grant award. The Project Manager role focuses on cross-project coordination, scheduling, and grant compliance. This position may lead to an equity ownership opportunity in a rapidly advancing business enterprise that holds a unique patent and resources for product development. 

If you are a detail-oriented organizer who writes clearly and takes pride in delivering complex projects on time and on budget — and you care about work that improves community health and equity — we would like to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day project management for a major grant and 3-4 other assigned projects — maintaining schedules, tracking tasks and milestones, monitoring budgets, and coordinating across staff, subcontractors, and consultants.
• Manage federal grant compliance and reporting, including progress reports, invoicing and drawdown documentation, prior-approval requests, and coordination with the sponsor’s program and grants-management staff.
• Develop and maintain project documentation — workplans, timelines, deliverable trackers, meeting agendas and minutes, and status reports — and keep the team aligned on what is due, when, and by whom;
• Professional and technical writing -- reports, deliverables, documentation, proposals, and summaries that translate complex technical and analytical work for funders, clients, and stakeholders;
• Organize and manage project data and databases — structuring, maintaining, and documenting datasets; supporting data integrity, versioning, and access; and coordinating with analysts and developers on data needs;
• Coordinate proposals and scopes of work, assembling contributions from multiple team members, tracking deadlines and requirements, and ensuring submissions are complete, compliant, and on time;
• Facilitate communication with clients, subcontractors, and partners — scheduling, following up on action items, and keeping stakeholders informed of progress and issues.
• Track risks and dependencies, flag schedule or budget concerns early, and help the team problem-solve to keep deliverables on track; and
• Coordinate with UD4H’s Product Manager on project specific scheduling and reporting needs, without owning product scope or requirements decisions.

Minimum Qualifications

• Demonstrated project-management experience coordinating multi-task, multi-person projects — including scheduling, budget tracking, deliverable management, and day-to-day client and subcontractor communication;
• Strong technical writing skills, with the ability to produce clear reports, documentation, and proposals and to translate technical information for a range of audiences. A writing sample will be requested;
• Excellent organizational and interpersonal skills, highly self-motivated, and able to manage competing deadlines in a collaborative, distributed-team environment;
• Proficiency with the Microsoft Office suite and common project-management and collaboration tools;
• Expertise in public health, urban planning, transportation, or the built environment and interest in the connections to health and equity;
• A master’s or professional degree in public health, geography, urban planning, transportation engineering, public administration, information management, or other related disciplines; and
• Familiarity with geographic information systems (GIS) and the development and application of geospatial data.

Highly Desired Qualifications

• Managing federal, state, or locally funded grants or contracts, and familiarity with federal grant administration reporting, compliance, invoicing, and prior-approval processes especially valued;
• Product Development and Commercialization experience including marketing and working with end users or clients and scaling up small business enterprise and advancing new innovative tools and technologies; 
• Exposure to data or research environments using tools such as R, Python, or SQL — not as a programmer, but enough to coordinate effectively with analysts and developers;
• Experience developing and coordinating successful proposals and technical reports for government, foundation, or private-sector clients;

Position & Location

This position may be part-time or full-time and offers considerable advancement opportunities. Work hours and locations are flexible. As a distributed virtual company, our team members work from their home offices; applicants may be located anywhere in the United States, with some preference for candidates able to overlap working hours with our core team. Compensation is commensurate with experience and very competitive.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, marital status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, nationality, or sex.

Please send a letter of interest, curriculum vitae or résumé, and a writing sample to info@ud4h.com. Please note any relevant project-management certifications in your letter, and specify that you are applying for the Project Manager position (as distinct from UD4H’s separately posted Product Manager role). This position will remain open until filled.