Company Overview

WRA’s an employee-owned environmental consultancy. We are a tenacious team of planners, engineers, and scientists, and we aim to leave the lands we love better than we found them. 

Our clients and partners hire us because we’re skilled at navigating through challenging projects involving wildlands, parks, community spaces, and infrastructure. We bring over four decades of expertise, long-standing relationships, and connections to our local communities to make sure that projects are pursued in responsible ways where both people and the environment thrive. 

As an organization, we believe that independence and interdependence are not mutually exclusive. We invest in systems, processes, and employee programs to support our staff’s collective engagement and success. At the same time, we encourage our employees to operate with an ownership mindset, taking responsibility for outcomes and being true to our commitments.

Position Overview

The Southern California Natural Resources Director is a principal-level role working in close partnership with the Mitigation Market Director and the Executive Committee. The primary responsibility of this role is to provide project delivery oversight for our Southern California projects. This entails working in close coordination with our Conservation Strategies team, allowing the Mitigation Market Director to focus on expanding our reach in the mitigation and conservation space. The Southern California Natural Resources Director is also expected to establish their own book of business in the Southern California region across restoration and permitting project types. This orientation to sales and marketing creates integrated cross-selling opportunities for our robust credit sales program.

This role is focused on three main areas of impact:

Principal oversight of project delivery (70%)

• Provide senior technical oversight on restoration, mitigation, and permitting projects.
• Work with the Conservation Strategies team and the broader WRA organization to ensure timely and quality delivery of complex, cross-functional projects.
• Conduct biological assessments and prepare technical biological reports.
• Develop innovative mitigation strategies utilizing technical and regulatory experience. 

Expanding the Southern California Market (15%)

• Expand new and existing client relationships to grow our traditional consulting service offerings in a variety of markets.
• Create collaborative buy-sell opportunities for mitigation credit sales.
• Work with sales and marketing support functions to establish and execute new client relationship strategies. 

Staff Management (15%)

• Manage a team of biologists within the Conservation Strategies team to provide mentoring and coaching to foster best practices and increase staff engagement within the team and with other teams.
• Address team issues proactively and support professional development.

Qualifications: 

• A Bachelor’s degree with major course work in biology, ecology, environmental science, or a related interdisciplinary field.
• 10+ years of experience leading client relationships and project teams in environmental consulting.
• Senior technical oversight experience on restoration, mitigation, and permitting projects.
• Proven ability to work with sales and marketing support functions to establish and execute new client relationship strategies.
• Experience with complex project management, business development, staff development, and environmental consulting industry best practices. 
• Effective team leader and communicator with a commitment to mentoring and coaching.
• Experience in creating a collaborative and inclusive team environment.  
• Direct experience with hiring and firing is a plus.
• Strong financial literacy is a plus.

This is Hybrid/Remote position based in the Southern California region, spanning San Diego, Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles Counties. Regional day-travel is to be expected particularly during field season, as well as some travel throughout California. Presence in the San Diego office is expected 1-2 times per month. 

WRA has an established internal leveling system for our staff that maps to salary bands that have been informed by market data. Our leveling system is dependent on years of relevant industry experience, education, and the level of responsibility and autonomy at which you’re expected to operate.

The salary range for this position is $140,000 - $175,000. In your first conversation with our recruiter, we will discuss leveling and compensation with you to make sure that expectations are aligned. 

Who are we?

WRA, Inc. is an environmental consulting firm based in San Rafael, California, with offices in Emeryville, Petaluma, and San Diego. For over 40 years, WRA has provided outstanding ecological and design expertise to develop successful solutions for our clients. We employ experts in the fields of botany, wildlife, and wetland ecology, GIS, environmental and master planning, engineering, and landscape architecture.

WRA is an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to creating a diverse environment. We recruit, employ, train, compensate and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law.