Technical Specialist -Urban Planner

ESA seeks a highly motivated Urban Planner to join us in one of our California offices. We are looking for a team member with 5–7 years of experience who has the intellectual curiosity and proactivity to continue the advancement of our established team of community planners and environmental consultants. This is a mid-level opportunity for our ever-growing team of community development professionals. This opportunity is focused on collaboration, delivery, and client service.  This position is a variable part-time with the expectation of working at least 10 hours per week.

Who You Are

• An effective and energetic team member with 5-7 years of experience supporting aspects of community planning relating to land use, public policy, climate change, community development, and permitting. You have a strong working knowledge of policy planning, land use permitting, and relevant federal, state, and local regulatory and environmental regulations and processes.
• You hold a Bachelor’s degree with major coursework in urban planning, geography, public policy, or an interdisciplinary field and can work with minimal direction for most tasks. Proficiency in design software, such as Adobe Creative Suite, ArcGIS, SketchUp, or others is a plus. 
• You have strong writing and analytical skills, and effective oral presentation skills with the ability to convey complex information understandably to different audiences.

What You Will Do for ESA

• As an Urban Planner, you will serve as task manager and contributing author for community planning documents for municipal and private development clients.
• You will be responsible for coordinating the task or project delivery schedule, handling logistics, disseminating and maintaining related information and resources, assisting with budget tracking and invoicing, meeting with team members to gauge progress toward task completion, and responding to team member or client questions about assigned tasks or projects.
• You will apply critical thinking and problem-solving to evaluate, select, and adapt standard techniques and procedures in the development of environmental compliance and planning documents. You will be required to effectively communicate with staff, clients, and teaming partners.

What ESA Will Do for You

Joining ESA means becoming part of a close-knit team of environmental professionals who contribute to outstanding projects, improve environmental stewardship, and advance a more sustainable and resilient future for our communities and wild places.

At ESA, we spend our days helping to keep the environment in balance, and we want to help keep your life in balance too—by providing benefits such as medical, dental, and vision insurance (paid at 70% for you AND your family), a 401(k) plan with company match, an employee stock ownership program, and paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays, to name a few.

No matter what stage you are at in your career, we provide opportunities for continued growth, development, and recognition. Whether you want to further your technical expertise, sharpen your business acumen, or help lead the next generation of employee-owners, we want to support you in reaching your career goals, and we believe these efforts will not only benefit you, but will also benefit all ESA colleagues and clients. Specific programs we offer include tuition reimbursement, professional development bonuses, and attendance at conferences.

What’s Special About Our Community Development Team 

 Our Community Development team has built a legacy of success providing environmental compliance, clearance, and advancement. We combine our firm’s technical depth in natural resources science and environmental planning with deep knowledge of local regulatory practices and procedures, including the most current legislation and case law, to create value-added, cost-effective, and legally defensible solutions for our clients.

ESA is unique in that we have a deep scientific, technical, and regulatory expertise, which we apply to our planning and environmental review projects. We keep project approval and implementation at the forefront, balancing long-term planning, community attributes, stakeholder objectives, and cost. Our focus is on comprehensiveness and clarity, and the result is that our planning, CEQA, and NEPA documents are frequently recognized by professional organizations with awards for creative approach and quality.

We have worked on many exciting projects, such as preparing Sacramento Central City Specific Plan and EIR. To read about some of the other exciting projects ESA is working on, check out these links: Oceanside Local Coastal Program Update, Gateway Cities Climate Action Planning Framework, and Southern California Association of Governments Climate Adaptation Framework

Who We Are 

We are a 100% employee-owned environmental consulting firm who values diversity and inclusion and celebrate the differences that make each of us unique. Our culture is built on mutual respect, recognizing that our variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives leads to better solutions, which fosters our continued success for our employee-owners and clients. 

In accordance with ESA’s duty and responsibility to provide and maintain a safe workplace that is free of known hazards and to minimize the exposure to potential hazards, any employee who works from an ESA office or conducts any other in-person ESA work-related activity is required to submit their proof of vaccination status or have received an approved exemption and accommodation in states which this applies. 

ESA is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to a diverse and inclusive work environment. (EOE M/V/F/D)