Junior Designer – City Design

Job Description

Junior Designer – City Design | SOM

The Tone:
This is an early career program position at SOM, a global firm committed to shaping a better future for clients, communities, and the planet. SOM creates sustainable and impactful architecture, engineering, and planning projects worldwide through interdisciplinary teams. The Year One program supports new designers in expanding their learning, proposing bold ideas, and contributing to the future of design. This role allows individuals to gain hands-on experience within a global organization, where creativity and ideas are valued from day one, enabling emerging designers to dive into the profession and make their mark.

The TL;DR
• Role: Early Career
• Type: Full-time
• Pay: $58000–$64000 yearly
• Team: City Design Practice (CDP) Team, collaborating with project leaders and interdisciplinary team members.
• Mission: Generate planning and design ideas, research, and visual production to contribute to city design projects.
• Tech Stack: AutoCAD, Rhino, Grasshopper, Enscape, Lumion, parametric and rendering software, Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office

What You’ll Actually Do
• Design & Visualization: Generate planning and design ideas, conduct research, document precedents and scale studies, develop diagrams, and render site plans, contributing to all graphic and visual production with proficient technical and visualization skills.
• Project Integration: Apply strong conceptual design ability to projects of varying complexity and sites of divergent scales, integrating interdisciplinary criteria to effectively move forward the planning and urban design aspects of complex projects. This includes demonstrating a basic understanding of planning and urban design concepts, building typologies and critical dimensions, utility and infrastructure systems, land development considerations, and planning/zoning codes.
• Communication & Collaboration: Effectively communicate internally through timely and appropriate written, oral, and visual means, actively collaborating at a project team level by developing, communicating, and constructively evaluating ideas.
• Practice & Development: Take initiative to learn and apply SOM City Design Practice protocols for file management and quality control standards for deliverables, manage time and workload to meet project task deadlines, and actively participate in office activities and professional development opportunities.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Recent completion of a professional Degree in Architecture, Planning, Urban design, or Landscape Architecture.
• Experience: Early career level, with an interest in large-scale planning, mixed-use and transit-oriented development.
• Skills: Proficiency in AutoCAD, Rhino, Grasshopper, Enscape, Lumion, parametric and rendering software, Adobe Creative Suite, and Microsoft Office. Demonstrates strong collaborative ability, initiative, process innovation, problem-solving, and attention to detail, precision, and accuracy.
• Bonus: LEED accreditation preferred; Revit proficiency a plus.