Senior Director - Major Event Planning

Parsons; Riyadh; On-site; SAR 55,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

Parsons Corporation in Riyadh seeks a Senior Director to establish the planning architecture for hosting major events, ensuring city operations, asset performance, safety, and guest experience remain uninterrupted.

You will lead integrated event planning end-to-end across mobility, security, crowd management, logistics, communications, and O&M, coordinating with event owners, venues, and districts to deliver a cohesive operating model and readiness triggers.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in related field required or equivalent.
• Extensive senior leadership experience in major-event planning.
• Experience integrating City Operations and O&M functions.

Responsibilities

• Establish the strategic framework for planning major events.
• Translate the strategic event calendar into an integrated multi-year portfolio plan.
• Coordinate mobility, security, crowd management, and public realm dependencies.
• Lead readiness and post-event review processes.
• Provide executive-level options and recommendations for complex decisions.
• Maintain an integrated master schedule and risk management practices.

Skills

Major event planning

Event portfolio management

Integrated event planning

Event operations

City Operations

O&M integration

Strategic leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Event Management

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration

Bachelor's degree in Operations Management

Bachelor's degree in Project Management

Tools

Planning tools

Collaboration platforms

Document management

Knowledge management

Job description

Senior Director - Major Event Planning Job Snapshot

Role: Senior Director - Major Event Planning

Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Industry: Events Services

Function: Event Planning-Coordination

Experience: Approximately 25 years

Job Type: Full-time

Job Details

Country: Saudi Arabia

City: Riyadh

Industry: Events Services

Function: Event Planning-Coordination

Salary: 55000-80000 Estimated salary range based on similar jobs in the job city; please confirm the final offer with the employer.

Gender: Any

Candidate Nationality: Any

Job Type: Full-time

Role Context

The Senior Director will establish the planning architecture that enables a complex destination to host major events without compromising normal city operations, asset performance, safety, or visitor experience. The position owns the integrated planning capability from portfolio strategy and early feasibility through readiness, live operations, decommissioning, and post-event improvement. Working as the City Operations planning lead, the role will integrate operational dependencies across mobility, security, crowd management, public realm, accessibility, logistics, technology, waste, cleaning, communications, emergency response, workforce, and O&M services. Event owners and venue operators will retain responsibility within their controlled areas, while this position ensures that citywide interfaces, responsibilities, dependencies, and readiness criteria are clearly defined and collectively understood.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish the strategic framework for planning major events across the destination.
• Develop the event planning lifecycle, governance model, standards, templates, and assurance requirements.
• Translate the strategic event calendar into an integrated multi-year portfolio plan.
• Evaluate cumulative operational demand created by concurrent and sequential events.
• Identify shared resources, capacity constraints, competing priorities, and scheduling conflicts.
• Define decision rights and accountability across City Operations, event owners, venues, districts, O&M teams, and corporate functions.
• Establish appropriate planning stage gates and approval requirements.
• Create escalation routes for unresolved operational and strategic issues.
• Prepare executive decision papers addressing feasibility, priorities, risk, readiness, and resource requirements.
• Provide senior leadership with clear options and recommendations for complex event planning decisions.
• Lead integrated event planning from initial concept through post-event review.
• Define event objectives, operating assumptions, scope boundaries, and attendance profiles.
• Establish service levels and operational performance expectations.
• Develop key milestones, deliverables, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Ensure individual functional plans form a coherent event operating model.
• Integrate mobility and transport requirements into citywide event plans.
• Coordinate security and public safety dependencies.
• Integrate crowd management strategies with venue and city operations.
• Ensure guest experience requirements are incorporated into operational planning.
• Coordinate accessibility requirements across event journeys and public areas.
• Integrate logistics, deliveries, servicing, and temporary operational movements.
• Coordinate waste collection and cleaning requirements.
• Align public realm operations with expected attendance and event activity.
• Coordinate temporary and permanent wayfinding requirements.
• Integrate workforce and volunteer planning with the broader operational model.
• Coordinate technology requirements supporting event operations.
• Align communications plans with operational and command structures.
• Integrate emergency response requirements across relevant stakeholders.
• Maintain an integrated master schedule for each major event.
• Establish action trackers with accountable owners and completion dates.
• Maintain dependency maps showing critical cross-functional interfaces.
• Control decision logs for major planning matters.
• Maintain an evidence repository supporting readiness and assurance decisions.
• Coordinate simultaneous events without undermining destination business continuity.
• Assess interactions between event operations and normal destination activity.
• Protect critical infrastructure and asset integrity during event periods.
• Develop citywide event operating concepts.
• Coordinate venue and destination operating models.
• Define temporary service overlays required to support event demand.
• Determine temporary infrastructure requirements with delivery stakeholders.
• Ensure operational concepts cover build and mobilisation phases.
• Coordinate testing and pre-event readiness periods.
• Define operational arrangements for live event periods.
• Plan breakdown, decommissioning, and reinstatement activities.
• Clarify boundaries between citywide services and venue-controlled operations.
• Document operational hand-offs between responsible organizations.
• Ensure service ownership is established before readiness approval.
• Challenge unnecessary temporary infrastructure requirements.
• Optimize shared services across multiple venues or events.
• Review land requirements and temporary asset utilization.
• Identify opportunities to improve resource efficiency.
• Consider whole-event cost when evaluating operational solutions.
• Establish a risk-based operational readiness and assurance program.
• Define the evidence required to demonstrate readiness.
• Develop review and approval requirements for critical operational functions.
• Establish practical go and no-go criteria.
• Lead tabletop exercises involving operational stakeholders.
• Coordinate simulations of significant event scenarios.
• Plan and assess test events.
• Lead venue and citywide readiness reviews.
• Coordinate integrated rehearsals involving City Operations and O&M functions.
• Engage government and emergency agencies in exercises where appropriate.
• Maintain event-level risk and issue registers.
• Track planning assumptions and validate them as event information matures.
• Maintain critical dependency information.
• Ensure contingency plans address credible disruption scenarios.
• Integrate business continuity arrangements with event operations.
• Identify material readiness gaps and elevate them promptly.
• Assign accountable owners to recovery actions.
• Establish clear recovery deadlines.
• Report readiness status transparently to executive leadership.
• Ensure approved planning arrangements transition effectively into live operations.
• Support development of command, control, and communication arrangements.
• Provide senior planning support during major live events.
• Coordinate resolution of cross-functional operational issues.
• Manage controlled changes to approved operating plans where necessary.
• Maintain alignment with event owners and command structures during live operations.
• Lead structured post-event reviews.
• Evaluate operational performance against agreed objectives.
• Capture lessons from incidents, service failures, successes, and stakeholder feedback.
• Develop improvement plans following major events.
• Embed recurring lessons into future event standards.
• Update templates and planning procedures based on operational experience.
• Incorporate lessons learned into procurement scopes and O&M procedures.
• Lead cross-functional event planning forums.
• Build effective working relationships with event owners and promoters.
• Coordinate with venue and asset operators.
• Engage district management teams on local operational requirements.
• Maintain relationships with relevant government entities.
• Coordinate with emergency services and public safety stakeholders.
• Engage sponsors and specialist service partners where operational interfaces exist.
• Coordinate stakeholder submissions and approvals.
• Track permits and regulatory dependencies.
• Maintain visibility of stakeholder commitments.
• Facilitate multi-agency planning and coordination meetings.
• Represent City Operations in formal event governance committees.
• Prepare concise executive dashboards.
• Report major decisions, readiness status, risk, cost, and schedule.
• Present planning recommendations to senior leadership.
• Develop event planning cost estimates and resource forecasts.
• Establish procurement strategies for specialist event services.
• Prepare scopes for event advisory, planning, and delivery support.
• Structure flexible supplier frameworks capable of supporting multiple event functions.
• Participate in technical tender evaluations.
• Assess supplier capability against operational requirements.
• Lead mobilisation planning for appointed specialist providers.
• Monitor supplier contract performance.
• Manage event planning change control.
• Conduct value-for-money reviews.
• Verify suppliers satisfy applicable local compliance requirements.
• Assess supplier mobilisation and local resource capability.
• Support workforce development expectations within procurement strategies.
• Manage assigned planning budgets.
• Maintain forecasts and cost reporting.
• Distinguish capital, operating, and event-specific expenditure.
• Identify potential budget pressure early enough for corrective decisions.
• Build and lead a high-performing event planning function.
• Determine permanent staffing requirements for the event portfolio.
• Establish temporary staffing requirements around peak event periods.
• Coordinate volunteer resource assumptions where applicable.
• Align contractor resource requirements with City Operations and O&M capabilities.
• Mobilize specialist consultants when additional expertise is required.
• Establish appropriate planning and collaboration tools.
• Develop effective event knowledge management practices.
• Provide structured training and mentoring to planning personnel.
• Establish succession and capability development arrangements.
• Promote accountability across planning and delivery teams.
• Encourage collaborative decision-making across organizational boundaries.
• Maintain strong focus on safety and guest experience.
• Develop local talent and transferable event planning capability.
• Drive continuous improvement across successive events.

Ideal Profile

The position requires a bachelor 's degree in Event Management, Business Administration, Operations Management, Project Management, Hospitality, Tourism, or a related discipline. A master 's degree in a relevant field is preferred. Candidates should bring approximately 25 years of progressive experience in major-event planning, event operations, programme management, destination operations, or a closely related environment. At least 10 to 12 years should have been gained in senior leadership positions with direct accountability for planning and operational integration of complex events. The successful candidate should demonstrate leadership of large sporting, entertainment, cultural, civic, or other high-attendance event programs. Experience integrating City Operations and O&M functions into major-event delivery is particularly important. Candidates should have managed citywide operational overlays involving multiple venues, districts, service functions, and delivery partners. Strong knowledge of integrated master scheduling, governance, stage-gate assurance, operational readiness, risk management, contingency planning, and executive reporting is required. Candidates should be comfortable coordinating government stakeholders, emergency services, event owners, operators, consultants, contractors, and specialist suppliers. Commercial capability should include budget development, procurement strategy, tender evaluation, contract performance, change control, and resource forecasting. Experience in Saudi Arabia, the GCC, destination developments, or giga-project environments is strongly preferred. Highly relevant backgrounds include Formula One, international football, Olympic or Asian Games programs, major tennis tournaments, festivals, concerts, exhibitions, and comparable high-profile events. Experience within organizing committees, destination operators, venue clusters, promoters, public authorities, event consultancies, or integrated resorts will be valuable. Professional certification in project, programme, event, risk, or operational management is desirable. The role requires executive presence, strategic judgement, decisive leadership under pressure, commercial awareness, structured problem solving, and the ability to influence complex stakeholder groups without blurring accountability boundaries.

Skills Set

Major event planning Event portfolio management Integrated event planning Event operations Destination operations City Operations O&M integration Programme governance Event governance Stage-gate assurance Integrated master scheduling Operational concept development Citywide operational overlays Venue operations Service overlays Temporary infrastructure Mobility planning Security integration Crowd management Guest experience Accessibility planning Event logistics Public realm operations Wayfinding Workforce planning Volunteer planning Event technology Emergency response Operational readiness Readiness assurance Tabletop exercises Event simulations Test events Integrated rehearsals Go and no-go criteria Risk management Contingency planning Business continuity Command and control Live event operations Post-event review Lessons learned Multi-agency coordination Government stakeholder management Emergency services coordination Stakeholder negotiation Executive reporting Decision support Executive dashboards Budget management Cost planning Resource forecasting Procurement strategy Tender evaluation Supplier management Contract management Change control Value for money Mobilisation planning Service-level definition Planning tools Collaboration platforms Document management Knowledge management Team leadership Capability development Strategic leadership

Why Join Us

Saudi Arabia's expanding destination and entertainment economy is creating demand for leaders capable of integrating major events with the permanent systems that keep a city functioning. This position goes beyond individual venue planning by coordinating the operational dependencies that connect transport, public realm, O&M, security, emergency response, guest services, technology, logistics, and infrastructure. The role provides executive-level exposure to a landmark giga-project aligned with Vision 2030 and the opportunity to establish planning frameworks that can support a long‑term portfolio of globally significant events. Its combination of event strategy, operational readiness, city integration, commercial management, and multi‑agency governance creates a distinctive platform for senior leadership impact.

About the Company

Parsons Corporation supports complex infrastructure, destination, program management, and city operations initiatives across Saudi Arabia. Its integrated teams work with clients, government stakeholders, operators, consultants, and delivery partners to coordinate major assets and operational programs, including the planning and readiness requirements needed for high‑profile destinations and events.