Consulting Principal - Cityfi

CannonDesign; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 204,000 - 229,000; Full time

Job summary

CannonDesign is seeking a senior leader to drive Cityfi consulting initiative across the US, Canada, and EU. The role combines consulting leadership, brand development, and operating platform establishment to enable cross-brand client delivery in mobility, civic innovation, and urban planning.

Expect to guide growth strategy, manage investments and pro-forma planning, and recruit talent to scale the network while maintaining strong client relationships and enduring brand impact.

Qualifications

• Proven history of successful leadership roles in private and public sectors, including strong reputation in mobility & civic innovation.
• Experience in top tier consulting, planning, operations, or development.
• Experience managing talent development functions and building teams.
• Experience developing a global multi-disciplinary consulting practice with cross-brand integration.
• Public and private-sector advisory experience in business strategy, experience, planning, placemaking, mobility, and urban planning.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and client projects while growing a new service line across broad geographic area.
• Bachelor’s degree required; master’s or advanced degree preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Cityfi practice collaboration with consulting and CannonDesign leaders to define growth, strategy, and investment.
• Identify market opportunities across brands and manage planning materials, pro-forma, and growth toward profitability targets.
• Establish operating platform for client delivery in strategy, experience, technology, mobility, and urban planning.
• Monitor growth KPIs and recruit and develop talent to scale the network.

Skills

Mobility & civic innovation

Leadership experience

Strategy & planning

Business development

Talent development

Client relationship management

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Master’s degree preferred

Job description

ABOUT THE ROLE

This role has both short- and long-term priorities. Short term, the principal will provide support in sourcing, pursuing, winning, and delivering work through Cityfi prime work or integrated pursuits across consulting and CannonDesign. As a consulting leader and owner, the individual will have experience building capacity and driving the establishment, definition, and growth of the Cityfi brand and team, while playing a critical role as a member of CannonDesign consulting platform’s leadership team. The consulting brands today are Blue Cottage, The Clarient Group, Yellow Brick, and Cityfi. Additional brands may be added to the portfolio in the future.

HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL DO

The role will work with consulting and firmwide executive leadership to:

• In the immediate term, prioritize securing and delivering work aligned with Cityfi’s ambitions
• Identify market opportunities with consulting leaders across all brands, create a sustainable plan for Cityfi US, Canada, and EU, define investment, develop business planning materials and pro-forma and manage toward 10% YoY growth in NSF and revenue, while achieving a minimum 25% profitability
• Continuously refine the Cityfi growth strategy in response to evolving market opportunities and challenges
• Establish the operating platform to enable successful client delivery in consulting including strategy, experience, technology, mobility, health, commercial, student housing, smart cities, future economies, and civic innovation
• Monitor, report, and facilitate achievement of growth KPIs across the Cityfi practice
• Recruit and develop talent to scale our network and opportunities
• Infuse Living-Centered Design principles by collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to co-create purposeful, user-centered solutions that enhance goals of the private and public partners or clients with whom you work
• Identify, establish and nurture meaningful, long-term relationships with clients and internal partners through excellence, integrity, and reliability and in a way that grows the consulting practice and elevates the brand, while making measurable, living-centered impact
• Build on our living-centered design mindset and capabilities as a firm, allowing our approach to problem solving to be deeply embedded in human-centered strategies that reflect community impact, social impact, operational needs and financial parameters

Whilst the role is a leadership role, and vision, influence, and impact are critical attributes, the principal also will be expected to possess and deploy technical skills on relevant project and mentor project teams.

Success in this role will be assessed based on several variables, including:

• Your consulting reputation, influence, and ability to win and lead complex projects both in your specific areas of focus (civic innovation, transit and mobility) and in partnership with others in the firm that may pursuing broader projects within which you can play an important role. Global brand and presence.
• Direct feedback on key behaviors of collaboration, team-first orientation, growth mindset, pursuit, people and cultural leadership and firm level involvement.
• Growth in number of active opportunities that align with the goals of Cityfi and the consulting platform, sole sourced and through competitive RFP submissions.
• Net Signed Fee secured in for any CannonDesign brand amounting to $3M in subsequent years (of new business and new engagements).
• 10% YoY growth in revenue and profit for Cityfi.
• 50% direct utilization on billable and profitable Cityfi projects.

HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• Proven history of successful leadership roles in private and public sectors, including strong reputation in mobility & civic innovation
• Experience in top tier consulting, planning, operations, or development
• Experience managing talent development functions, including building teams and developing talent pipelines
• Experience developing a global multi-disciplinary consulting practice, including operational integration across many branded services
• Public and private-sector advisory experience in business strategy, experience, planning, placemaking, mobility, and urban planning
• Ability to manage multiple corporate priorities and several client projects, while growing a new service line across broad geographic area
• Bachelor’s degree required, master’s or advanced degree preferred

The salary range for this position is $204,000 to $229,000 annually. This salary range is the range we believe is the anticipated range of possible base compensation at the timing of the posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the anticipated salary range for the position. Based on the position status, employees may be eligible for discretionary bonuses and a full benefit package including medical, dental and vision coverage and flexible spending account options and voluntary insurances. We have paid time off, flex-time schedules, remote work options and a 401k plan and employee perk programs. For a general overview of our benefits, please visit our careers page at https://www.cannondesign.com/careers/benefits. Actual compensation may vary from posting based on geographic location, work experience, education and/or skill level.

ABOUT OUR FIRM

CannonDesign is a design practice where strategy, experience, architecture, engineering, and social impact converge. We don’t just dream up solutions — we create and bring them to life in ways to solve some of the biggest challenges facing our clients and the society. At the heart of everything we do is Living-Centered Design, a bold commitment to using our talents to not just improve the world but to truly reshape it for the better. It’s more than a philosophy — it’s who we are, and it drives us to make a meaningful, lasting difference every day.

ABOUT WORKING HERE

• We are relentless in our pursuit of client adoration (not simply satisfaction). Consistent delivery of the best service is what we are about.
• We are committed to ensuring our practice provides equal opportunities for all employees, as we strive to connect with communities around us and focus on the future of design. We support equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts that benefit all employees through the leadership of our DEI Council, our Employee Resource Groups which are open to everyone, and other community initiatives.
• We’re about communication and transparency here. If you want to talk to someone about an idea you have, or a challenge that needs addressing, we’re ready for you.

As a condition of employment, all employees are expected to complete mandatory training, including compliance training, within required timeframes and adhere to our internal policies and our Code of Conduct.

CannonDesign is an Equal Opportunity Employer. CannonDesign is committed to maintaining a work environment that is free from any and all forms of unlawful discrimination and harassment. It is therefore the firm’s policy to prohibit discrimination and harassment against any applicant, CannonDesign employee, vendor, contractor, or client on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, genetic information, citizenship status, or any other basis prohibited by applicable law. It is also CannonDesign’s policy to prohibit any and all forms of retaliation against any individual who has complained of harassing or discriminatory conduct, or participated in a firm or agency investigation into such complaints.