Director of Risk & Legal Counsel

Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd.

Vancouver

On-site

CAD 160,000 - 190,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Employee ownership program

Maternity and Parental Leave Top-Up

RRSP matching

Collaborative culture

Growth and leadership development

Job summary

Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd. (RJC) in Vancouver is a leading employee-owned consulting engineering firm focused on risk, contracts, and governance.

The Director of Risk and Legal Counsel will lead enterprise risk management, contract risk strategy, and professional liability programs across the firm, reporting to the Executive Principal and partnering with senior leadership.

Qualifications

Licensed lawyer in Canada with LL.B. or J.D. and bar eligibility.
5+ years of legal leadership or advisory experience.
Experience in consulting engineering, architecture, or project-based industries.
Ability to build enterprise risk frameworks, governance, and reporting processes.

Responsibilities

Lead enterprise risk management framework and risk appetite statement.
Align risk programs with stakeholders across the firm and regions.
Develop project risk review protocols and establish oversight committees.
Set firm-wide standards for contract risk, templates, playbooks, and training materials.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic thinking

Contract risk

Risk management

Communication

Education

LL.B. or J.D.

Job description

At RJC, our greatest strength is our people.

For over 75 years, we have built a reputation for technical excellence, trusted relationships, and a commitment to making a positive impact on our clients, our communities, and one another. As an employee-owned organization, we take pride in creating an environment where people are empowered to grow, collaborate, and contribute to something larger than themselves.

As we look to the future, we are focused on strengthening our organizational capabilities, deepening collaboration across disciplines and regions, leveraging our collective knowledge, and embracing innovation that enhances the value we deliver to clients.

Being an RJC Professional

We build our team around five key attributes:

Creative Mindset - You bring fresh ideas, challenge assumptions, and turn obstacles into opportunities.
Proactive Approach - You take initiative, anticipate challenges, and seek ways to create a positive impact.
Supportive Teamwork - You foster a culture of inclusivity, respect, and collaboration, helping others succeed.
Trusted Advice - You act with integrity, expertise, and honesty, earning the confidence of clients and colleagues.
Lead with Purpose - You empower, support, and guide others, driving meaningful results

SALARY RANGE: $160,000 to $190,000

The Opportunity

The Director of Risk and Legal Counsel is a leadership role responsible for establishing, leading, and continuously improving RJC's legal, contract, professional liability, regulatory, and enterprise risk practices within a consulting engineering environment.

Reporting to an Executive Principal and working closely with senior leadership, principals, project leaders, insurance, finance, corporate, and external legal partners, this role provides strategic and practical legal leadership that helps RJC assess opportunities, negotiate balanced agreements, manage disputes, strengthen governance, and make sound risk-informed decisions. Current direct reports include the Manager, Risk and Compliance, who leads a team of two, and the Health and Safety Program Advisor.

The role acts as a firm-wide business partner who will lead the firm's contract risk strategy, including oversight of client agreements, subconsultant agreements, teaming arrangements, joint ventures, procurement documents, and project-related commercial terms. The successful candidate will set direction, provide escalation guidance, and build consistent practices for managing the risks commonly encountered by consulting engineering firms, including scope gaps, limitation of liability, standard of care, indemnities, warranties, intellectual property, insurance requirements, dispute resolution, and professional liability exposure.

This role will also provide leadership for claims management, regulatory and professional-practice compliance, governance initiatives, legal operations, and the continued development of RJC's risk and contract review frameworks.

Success in the role will result in stronger firm-wide legal governance, clearer escalation pathways, more consistent contract decisions, stronger loss-prevention outcomes, and greater confidence among leaders when navigating complex client and project commitments.

The successful candidate will also lead the continued development of RJC's firmwide enterprise risk management framework, helping connect project-level risk insights with broader strategic, operational, regulatory, reputational, insurance, and governance considerations. Success in the role will result in clearer and more consistent risk and contract decisions, stronger claims and loss-prevention outcomes, sustainable insurance and risk-transfer programs, and a stronger culture of risk awareness across RJC.

Key Responsibilities

Lead, maintain, and mature the firm's established enterprise risk management framework and risk appetite statement.
Work with stakeholders across the firm who own and lead their own risk mitigation strategies, aligning them to the enterprise framework and appetite statement.
Conduct regular and continuous risk assessments across corporate and operational business units to identify emerging and existing risks.
Present strategic risk profiles, mitigation metrics, and emerging trends to the Executive team and senior leadership.

Legal Leadership & Contract Risk Strategy

Lead the development and execution of RJC's legal and contract risk strategy, ensuring practical, consistent, and commercially balanced guidance across offices, regions, and practice areas.
Provide senior-level advice and escalation support to principals, project leaders, and corporate teams on complex contracts, procurement documents, project delivery issues, disputes, and risk allocation.
Develop a Project Risk review protocols and establish an oversight committee from operations to review major client contracts, joint ventures, sub-consultant and confidentiality agreements.
Set firm-wide standards for managing contract risks, and lead the development and maintenance of contract templates, guidance notes, playbooks and training materials that improve consistency and decision quality across the firm.
Support operations to minimize corporate exposure related to professional liability, errors and omissions (E&O), and design warranties. Provide oversight and audit of internal operational QA/QC processes.

Project Risk, Claims & Dispute Leadership

Lead legal and commercial risk review for major pursuits, strategic clients, high-risk projects, and non-standard contract terms, including advice on negotiation strategy and executive escalation.
Provide strategic oversight of professional liability, errors and omissions, design responsibility, site-service, delay, change, payment, and dispute-related matters.
Manage claims in collaboration with the operational leaders, to direct the strategy for resolving professional liability claims and commercial disputes, in conjunction with our insurance provider and external legal counsel.
Manage and direct relationships with insurers, brokers, and external counsel on claims, threatened claims, dispute strategy, settlement discussions, litigation, arbitration, and lessons learned.
Translate claims and near-miss experience into practical loss-prevention initiatives, capturing lessons learned and feeding them back into project delivery.

Regulatory, Professional Practice & Governance

Lead RJC's approach to professional-practice, licensing, corporate registration, procurement, privacy, records-management, anti-bribery, conflict-of-interest, and other regulatory compliance matters relevant to a consulting engineering firm.
Strengthen governance processes, internal policies, compliance reviews, and responses to regulatory inquiries or investigations in collaboration with senior leaders and external advisors.

Health & Safety Oversight

In collaboration with Operations, and supported by the Health and Safety Program Advisor, establish and implement the strategic vision for RJC's safety culture through Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) programs across the firm.
Ensure strict compliance with occupational health and safety legislation, site-specific safety regulations, and hazardous environment protocols.
Oversee accident investigations, root-cause analyses, and corrective action implementation.
Partner with Human Resources on people-related matters including workers' compensation claims, incident-related employee matters, accommodations, return-to-work processes, and related compliance requirements.

Professional Qualifications & Experience

Member in good standing of a Canadian law society, with an LL.B. or J.D. and the ability to provide legal advice in the provinces in which RJC operates.
5 - 8+ years of relevant legal experience, including leadership or advisory experience with consulting engineering, architecture, construction, or project-based organizations.
Demonstrated ability to lead legal, contract risk, claims, compliance, governance, or enterprise risk functions, including setting strategy, establishing processes, advising senior leaders, and influencing decision-making across a complex organization.
Proven experience developing, implementing, or maturing enterprise risk management frameworks, risk registers, risk appetite statements, compliance programs, and related reporting processes.
Strong understanding of contractual, professional liability, regulatory, health and safety, operational, and reputational risks within a professional services, engineering, construction, or project-based environment.
Commercially minded, pragmatic, and relationship-oriented, with the judgment, credibility, and communication skills required to advise Executives, Principals, and Project leaders on high-stakes matters.
Experience developing and leading contract templates, legal playbooks, risk-review processes, governance practices, training, reporting, or compliance programs.
Experience advising employee-owned, multi-office, or partnership-style professional services organizations would be considered an asset.

Why Join RJC?

This is an opportunity to provide firm-wide legal and risk leadership inside one of Canada's leading employee-owned consulting engineering firms.

As Director of Risk and Legal Counsel, you will:

Play a key role in strengthening RJC's enterprise risk management, compliance, and governance capabilities in support of the firm's long-term strategic priorities.
Shape and lead RJC's contract, legal risk, and professional liability practices across a diverse consulting engineering business.
Build clear tools, training, templates, reporting, and review processes that improve consistency, confidence, and accountability across offices and regions.
Provide leadership in developing practical risk frameworks, compliance processes, and oversight mechanisms that support sound decision-making across the organization.
Help protect RJC's people, clients, projects, and reputation by identifying, assessing, and mitigating key operational, contractual, regulatory, and safety risks.
Collaborate with leaders across the organization to embed consistent risk and compliance practices while supporting collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Contribute to the long-term success of an employee-owned organization committed to technical excellence, trusted relationships, professional integrity, and meaningful impact.

What We Offer