Deputy Director

Oregon Metro • Metro Regional Center, OR

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

Metro seeks a Deputy Director for the Housing Department to help advance the department's strategic goals and operational priorities. Reporting to the Housing Director, this position provides executive leadership for organizational strategy, departmental operations, workforce planning, budgeting, implementation of special initiatives, and cross-department collaboration. The Deputy Director serves as a key advisor to the Director, helping to ensure organizational effectiveness, alignment with Metro priorities, and successful execution of department objectives. This position also serves as Acting Director when needed and plays a critical role in fostering a high-performing, equitable, and collaborative organizational culture. The ideal candidate is a strategic, equity-centered leader with demonstrated success advancing organizational effectiveness, professional development, and systems change. They bring a strong grounding in diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, a track record of advancing structural change to ensure an inclusive and safe work environment. The successful candidate will possess the courage to navigate complex conversations, influence decision-makers, empower staff, and build trust across diverse stakeholder groups while fostering a culture of transparency, accountability, and collaboration. This leader will be skilled at translating vision into action, balancing long-term strategic priorities with day-to-day operational needs, and guiding organizations through change. They will demonstrate curiosity, humility, emotional intelligence, and a commitment to learning and partnership.

Requirements

• Seven to ten years of specialized experience or operational management in area of responsibility
• A bachelor’s degree in the assigned program area or a related field, or Any combination of education and experience that provides the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the classification duties and responsibilities.

Nice To Haves

• Experience advancing racial equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging through organizational and systems change.
• Demonstrated success in leading teams and/or departments within large agencies.
• Ability to build and maintain relationships with culturally specific organizations and communities in service of long-term systems change.
• Experience successfully leading organizational transformation and culture change.
• Experience in change management, strategic planning, and organizational development.
• Demonstrated ability to build consensus among leaders with competing priorities.
• Ability to break down organizational silos and foster collaboration.
• Ability to set clear expectations and holds themselves and other leaders accountable for results.
• Ability to make timely, sound decisions using data, judgment, and organizational priorities.
• Ability to develop managers who effectively lead people, solve problems, and deliver results.
• Ability to anticipate organizational risks and proactively implement solutions.
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with disciplined execution.
• Experience creating systems that improve consistency, transparency, and organizational effectiveness.
• Ability to build trust through clear communication, sound judgment, fairness, and follow-through.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity without losing momentum or accountability.
• Experience overseeing operations within a complex public-sector, governmental, nonprofit, or similarly regulated organization, including responsibility for personnel management, budgeting, compliance, advancing equity and organizational performance.
• Ability to lead complex, multi-layered organizations through operational excellence, organizational effectiveness, and continuous improvement.
• Ability to manage multiple managers and developing strong leadership capacity throughout an organization.
• Experience building management systems that establish accountability, improve decision-making, and ensure consistent execution.
• Experience leading personnel management within a unionized environment, including performance management, employee relations, organizational change, and labor-management collaboration.
• Experience developing and implementing organizational performance measures, operational standards, and management dashboards.
• Experience managing complex budgets, administrative operations, compliance functions, and organizational risk.
• Ability to translate strategic priorities into operational plans with measurable results.
• Experience successfully leading organizations through significant organizational growth, complexity, and change.
• Experience building partnerships with local governments, housing providers, and community organizations.

Responsibilities

• Lead the overall operations and organizational development of a complex department, ensuring programs, people, and resources are aligned with organizational priorities and long-term goals.
• Partner with the Director to develop and execute strategic priorities, departmental goals, and organizational initiatives, coordinating implementation across functions, programs, and stakeholders.
• Direct organizational planning, advancing equity in internal operations, workforce planning, workload prioritization, resource allocation, budget development, and fiscal stewardship to support effective and sustainable service delivery.
• Provide executive leadership for personnel management, including organizational design, leadership development, succession planning, performance management, employee development, and corrective action; coach and hold managers accountable for effective supervision, decision-making, and consistent application of management practices.
• Establish performance expectations and measures that promote accountability, operational excellence, continuous improvement, efficiency, quality, equity, and collaboration.
• Lead complex, high-priority, and time-sensitive projects and cross-functional initiatives, developing interdepartmental strategies that leverage existing work and advance shared organizational objectives.
• Develop and maintain effective partnerships with jurisdictional, coalition, community, and organizational leaders, and serve as a trusted advisor to elected officials and senior leadership on strategic, operational, and organizational matters.
• Foster a culture of accountability, professionalism, collaboration, innovation, and organizational effectiveness.

Benefits

• The full-salary range for this position is step 1: $180,694.15 to step 6: $230,617.33. However, unless a candidate’s qualifications justify, based on the Oregon Pay Equity Act requirementsand Metro’s internal equity review process, the appointment will likely be made between step 1: $180,694.15 to the equity range step 3: $199,215.43.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director