Practice Lead — Transportation Engineering & Planning

Toole Design Group LLC • Silver Spring, MD

14d • $145,000 - $220,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Toole Design is seeking an experienced transportation professional to lead their integrated transportation engineering and multimodal planning practice. This firmwide leadership role combines practice leadership with active project delivery. The company focuses on creating safer, more connected communities through sustainable multimodal transportation design, emphasizing streets as public places where engineering and urban design strengthen each other. The role involves mentoring staff, guiding business development, shaping technical direction, and staying active on major projects. The company is employee-owned and committed to fostering a collaborative, inclusive culture.

Requirements

• Desire to lead a practice — not just a project. Energized by developing the next generation of engineers and planners.
• Strategic thinking for where the practice should go, what work to pursue, and how to position the firm for what's next.
• Commitment to technical excellence as a personal standard and to remain a trusted senior voice on signature, complex projects.
• Excitement to craft and communicate a vision that bridges planning and engineering.
• 15+ years of success on transportation engineering and multimodal planning projects.
• Demonstrated success building and leading teams, programs, practices and projects.
• Experience in business development, proposal strategy, client development.
• A belief that strong engineering makes great planning real — and that streets are public places where engineering rigor and urban design strengthen one another.
• A commitment to creating safer, more equitable, and more sustainable transportation systems for the communities we serve.
• Careers rooted in either transportation engineering or multimodal transportation planning, provided they have demonstrated success leading integrated teams, delivering complex projects, and growing a transportation practice.

Nice To Haves

• A PE is preferred.
• PTOE and/or AICP credentials are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead business development and practice business planning in support of annual growth targets, in partnership with regional leadership.
• Support the practice’s financial health through effective project delivery, workload management, staff development, and quality control.
• Collaborate with local, regional, and corporate leadership to advance practice priorities.
• Help recruit and advise on hiring decisions to support local and firmwide growth goals.
• Advance training, innovation, and quality control to keep technical work at the forefront of the industry, mentoring staff through project work.
• Support marketing and raise the practice's local and national visibility.
• Guide subject matter resource groups that support practice delivery, including traffic engineering, multimodal planning, transportation design and related specialties.
• Serve as Principal-in-Charge, Project Director, Senior Technical Advisor, or Project Manager on major transportation planning and engineering efforts.
• Provide leadership on transportation planning projects including: Comprehensive plans, long range transportation plans, city or area-wide mobility plans and corridor studies; Multimodal traffic impact analysis, traffic operations analysis, and safety analysis; Parking, curbside management, and transportation demand management strategies; Public engagement, policy development, and implementation strategies.
• Provide leadership on transportation engineering and design projects including: Multimodal street design that balances safety, mobility, access, and placemaking objectives applying safe systems principles; Conceptual geometric design for corridor and intersection reconfigurations, with hand-off to civil engineering for final design; Traffic signal design, retiming, and timing optimization; Signing, pavement marking, maintenance of traffic, and rapid-implementation design projects; Road safety audits, crash analysis, and countermeasure selection.

Benefits

• Employee-ownership
• Collaborative, inclusive culture
• Hybrid schedule with in-office team days (Tuesday–Thursday)
• 8 paid holidays
• 24 days of PTO accrued annually
• Competitive salary
• Excellent benefits
• Transportation perks
• Projects that truly improve lives through safe, inclusive design rooted in ethics, empathy, and equity

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed