Federal Design Manager – Design-Build Focus

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Job Description:

The Federal Design Build Manager is responsible for leading and managing the design execution process on federal projects delivered through design-build or other integrated delivery methods. This role is accountable for the oversight, coordination, and integration of the contractor’s design efforts, ensuring compliance with contract requirements, federal criteria, and client expectations from project startup through final design, construction, commissioning, and closeout.

The Design Manager serves as the primary interface between the owner, contractor, and design teams, providing technical leadership and rigorous oversight of the contractor’s design development, submittals, and design changes. The role requires deep experience in design-build project delivery, including constructability reviews, design validation, and proactive resolution of design-construction interface issues.

The Design Manager operates as part of a project leadership triad with the Project Manager and the Project Engineer/Senior Project Engineer. The Design Manager is specifically responsible for:

• Oversight and integration of the contractor’s design and design-build team activities.
• Ensuring design compliance with contract documents, federal standards, and owner’s project requirements.
• Managing design reviews, submittal processes, and design change control.
• Leading constructability reviews and facilitating seamless transition from design to construction.
• Providing technical direction and resolving design-related issues during construction.

A successful candidate will be able to clearly articulate, at any point in project execution, the status of design actions and decisions, ownership and due dates, affected deliverables or milestones, supporting evidence for closure, and any unresolved issues impacting scope, cost, schedule, quality, safety, security, constructability, commissioning, client acceptance, or contractual entitlement.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Design-Build Oversight: Lead and manage the design process on design-build projects, including direct oversight of the contractor’s design team, subconsultants, and specialty designers.
• Design Integration: Integrate contract requirements, federal criteria, client direction, and design-basis information into a coordinated design-build delivery approach.
• Design Review & Validation: Plan, coordinate, and lead design reviews, interdisciplinary checks, constructability reviews, and quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) activities.
• Submittal Management: Oversee and track design submittals, responses to comments, and resolution of design issues to ensure timely and compliant deliverables.
• Change Control: Manage design changes, evaluate impacts, and ensure proper documentation and communication of design modifications.
• Construction Support: Provide technical oversight and support during construction, including review of shop drawings, RFIs, field changes, and as-built documentation.
• Stakeholder Coordination: Serve as the primary point of contact for design-related matters with the contractor, owner, federal agencies, and other stakeholders.
• Risk Management: Identify, assess, and mitigate design and constructability risks throughout the project lifecycle.

What Required Skills You'll Bring:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in engineering, architecture, construction management, or a closely related technical discipline. 
• Professional Experience: Fifteen or more years of progressive experience in design, engineering, architecture, or project delivery, with substantial responsibility for multidisciplinary design coordination and formal deliverables on design-build projects.
• Design-Build Leadership: Demonstrated experience leading or serving in a senior design-management role on complex, high-profile, regulated, mission-critical, infrastructure, facility, or federal design-build projects.
• Project Lifecycle Experience: Proven track record supporting projects from startup and design planning through final design, issue for construction, construction support, commissioning, and closeout.
• Contractor Design Oversight: Experience overseeing and validating contractor’s design, managing submittals, and ensuring compliance with owner’s project requirements and federal standards.
• Constructability & Integration: Strong background in constructability reviews, design-construction integration, and facilitating effective collaboration between design and construction teams.
• Quality & Readiness: Experience planning and coordinating design reviews, QA/QC interfaces, comment disposition, package-readiness reviews, and documented exceptions.
• US Citizenship with the ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.

What Desired Skills You'll Bring:

• Professional Registration: Active Professional Engineer or Registered Architect license preferred; registration may be required for specific assignments.
• Project Management Credentials: PMP, DBIA, CCM, or other relevant project, design-build, construction, quality, or safety credential.
• Federal Delivery Experience: Experience with U.S. federal agencies, defense or civilian programs, secure facilities, complex infrastructure, or mission-critical environments.
• Alternative Delivery Expertise: Extensive experience with design-build, engineer-procure-construct, integrated delivery, progressive design-build, or other delivery methods requiring close design-construction integration.
• Technical Breadth: Strong understanding of multidisciplinary building, site, utility, infrastructure, systems, digital delivery, constructability, procurement, and commissioning interfaces.
• Commercial Awareness: Experience supporting design budgets, labor forecasts, change documentation, scope clarification, entitlement protection, and recovery planning.
• External Contributor Management: Experience integrating subconsultants, specialty consultants, vendors, utilities, reviewers, authorities having jurisdiction, and construction teams.
• Team Development: Demonstrated success coaching, mentoring, and developing design managers, discipline leads, and emerging project leaders in a matrixed organization.
• Secret Security Level Clearance

Security Clearance Requirement:

None

This position is part of our Federal Solutions team.

The Federal Solutions segment delivers resources to our US government customers that ensure the success of missions around the globe. Our intelligent employees drive the state of the art as they provide services and solutions in the areas of defense, security, intelligence, infrastructure, and environmental. We promote a culture of excellence and close-knit teams that take pride in delivering, protecting, and sustaining our nation's most critical assets, from Earth to cyberspace. Throughout the company, our people are anticipating what’s next to deliver the solutions our customers need now.

Salary Range: $112,200.00 - $196,400.00

We value our employees and want our employees to take care of their overall wellbeing, which is why we offer best-in-class benefits such as medical, dental, vision, paid time off, Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), 401(k), life insurance, flexible work schedules, and holidays to fit your busy lifestyle!

Parsons is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other protected status.

We truly invest and care about our employee’s wellbeing and provide endless growth opportunities as the sky is the limit, so aim for the stars! Imagine next and join the Parsons quest—APPLY TODAY!

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