Senior Associate: Environmental Planning & Engagement

The Position: Cascadia Partners seeks a visionary Senior Associate to serve as a high-impact project manager and strategic leader within our growing multidisciplinary practice. This role sits at the intersection of transformative environmental planning and dynamic public engagement.

What You’ll Work On: In this role, you will lead high-profile projects that directly address today's most pressing environmental challenges - from crafting visionary parks master plans and expanding resilient urban forest ecosystems, to supporting cutting-edge climate action plans. You will help clients navigate complex, high-stakes public processes by designing engagement strategies, facilitating community conversations, and delivering accessible visual storytelling. If you are eager to manage impactful projects, lead cross-functional teams, and turn bold environmental visions into real-world change, this position is for you.

Our Work: Cascadia Partners is a multidisciplinary consulting firm headquartered in Portland, OR, with a team of over 20 staff who work in-person, hybrid, or remotely. We work on 40-50 projects across the country annually, ranging from large-scale city comprehensive plans, site-level master plans, housing policy, zoning code updates, scenario planning, and community engagement. We focus on actionable plans that get built and solutions rooted in equitable community engagement.

Position Details: As a Senior Associate, you will jump into the driver's seat of our most inspiring environmental initiatives. What you will work on includes:

• Parks Master Plans: Spearheading visionary plans for green spaces, trail networks, and public parks that build community health, promote equity, and connect people to nature.
• Urban Forest Plans: Designing strategic plans to expand canopy coverage, enhance biodiversity, build urban climate resilience, and protect vital ecosystem services.

  Climate Action & Resilience Plans: Developing actionable, data-driven roadmaps to help cities mitigate carbon footprints, adapt to climate impacts, and center frontline communities in the green transition.

  In addition to leading these flagship projects, you will fill a critical capability gap at the firm by taking ownership of our strategic engagement work—designing the full trajectory of community involvement, guiding stakeholders through complex trade-offs, and resolving high-stakes challenges. You will manage production, interface directly with clients, direct internal project teams, oversee project budgets, and leverage your visual design skills to craft compelling, publication-ready layouts.

Our Values: We value diversity, equity, and inclusion on our team and in our work. We value intellectual curiosity and lifelong learning and offer professional development stipends and frequent internal skill-building courses. We value a healthy life-work balance and offer every other Friday off and 4 weeks starting paid vacation.

Representative Tasks:

• Project & Team Leadership: Manage 3–5 concurrent planning projects, directing multidisciplinary teams of staff planners, subconsultants, and designers to deliver work on time, on budget, and within scope.
• Strategic Engagement Design: Author robust community engagement plans, design creative outreach materials and messaging, and facilitate high-stakes public workshops, advisory committee meetings, and focus groups.
• Technical & Policy Analysis: Synthesize complex spatial, demographic, and environmental data to inform land use, urban canopy, parks, and climate policies.
• Visual Storytelling & Layout: Use InDesign, Illustrator, and GIS tools to produce highly polished, client-ready reports, infographics, and public presentations.
• Client & Stakeholder Management: Serve as the primary point of contact for municipal clients, steering committees, and community partners, managing scope expectations and project budgets.

Required Qualifications

• Experience: Minimum of 5+ years of professional experience in urban planning, environmental planning, public policy, communications, or a related field.
• Education: Master's Degree in Urban Planning, Environmental Studies, Landscape Architecture, Public Administration, or related fields.
• Project Management: Demonstrated success in managing projects and people, maintaining budgets, leading client meetings, and ensuring deliverables are on time and within scope.
• Strategic Engagement: Experience designing planning processes and comprehensive engagement strategies and a willingness to champion this expertise within the firm. You have "been in the trenches," made mistakes, resolved issues, and know how to navigate tense or challenging situations with community members from diverse backgrounds.
• Meeting Facilitation: Proven ability to facilitate complex, multi-stakeholder meetings and public workshops, moving groups toward consensus.
• Visual Communications & Graphic Design: Skilled in layout design, graphic design, and visual storytelling, with the ability to translate complex planning concepts into highly polished, legible public materials.
• Environmental Planning Knowledge: Practical knowledge of frameworks related to environmental planning, climate action, urban forestry, sustainability, or parks and recreation master planning.

Desirable Qualifications

• Long-Range Planning Integration: Experience seamlessly blending engagement strategy into long-range environmental initiatives like climate resilience blueprints, urban forest plans, and parks master plans.
• Local Government Collaboration: Experience working directly with or within municipal governments (e.g., parks departments, sustainability offices, or environmental planning divisions) to deliver high-stakes public plans.

Work Location

• Preference for candidates based in or willing to relocate to Oregon or southwest Washington.
• If based in the Portland metro area, must work 2 days per week in our office in the Pearl District.
• Travel to client locations required (once every 1-3 months).

Compensation and Benefits

$85,000–$100,000 depending on experience and qualifications

• Every other Friday off (36-hour average work week)
• Gold-level health insurance, dental, life insurance, 401(k) with 3% employer match
• Professional development stipend for training, conferences, and skill-building

Generous PTO:

• 4 weeks PTO in year one (prorated to hire date); 1 additional week per year of tenure, up to 8 weeks
• 11 paid holidays
• Paid parental leave (dependent on state of residence)

How to Apply

Application materials can be submitted to [email protected] by Sunday, September 6, 2026
Please include 'Senior Associate - Environmental Planning & Engagement' in your subject line

Application materials should consist of the following:

• Cover Letter describing your interest in this position, your philosophy on community engagement, and relevant experience in environmental and long-range planning.
• Resumé summarizing work and educational history.
• Work Portfolio featuring at least one engagement plan or summary report, and examples of visual communication/graphic layout work you have directly produced.