Director of Risk

For over 75 years, we have built a reputation for technical excellence, trusted relationships, and a commitment to making a positive impact on our clients, our communities, and one another. Creative Mindset
- You bring fresh ideas, challenge assumptions, and turn obstacles into opportunities. Supportive Teamwork
- You foster a culture of inclusivity, respect, and collaboration, helping others succeed. Lead with Purpose
- You empower, support, and guide others, driving meaningful results The Director of Risk and Legal Counsel is a leadership role responsible for establishing, leading, and continuously improving RJC's legal, contract, professional liability, regulatory, and enterprise risk practices within a consulting engineering environment. Reporting to an Executive Principal and working closely with senior leadership, principals, project leaders, insurance, finance, corporate, and external legal partners, this role provides strategic and practical legal leadership that helps RJC assess opportunities, negotiate balanced agreements, manage disputes, strengthen governance, and make sound risk-informed decisions. Current direct reports include the Manager, Risk and Compliance, who leads a team of two, and the Health and Safety Program Advisor. The role acts as a firm-wide business partner who will lead the firm's contract risk strategy, including oversight of client agreements, subconsultant agreements, teaming arrangements, joint ventures, procurement documents, and project-related commercial terms. The successful candidate will set direction, provide escalation guidance, and build consistent practices for managing the risks commonly encountered by consulting engineering firms, including scope gaps, limitation of liability, standard of care, indemnities, warranties, intellectual property, insurance requirements, dispute resolution, and professional liability exposure. This role will also provide leadership for claims management, regulatory and professional-practice compliance, governance initiatives, legal operations, and the continued development of RJC's risk and contract review frameworks. Success in the role will result in stronger firm-wide legal governance, clearer escalation pathways, more consistent contract decisions, stronger loss-prevention outcomes, and greater confidence among leaders when navigating complex client and project commitments. The successful candidate will also lead the continued development of RJC's firmwide enterprise risk management framework, helping connect project-level risk insights with broader strategic, operational, regulatory, reputational, insurance, and governance considerations. Success in the role will result in clearer and more consistent risk and contract decisions, stronger claims and loss-prevention outcomes, sustainable insurance and risk-transfer programs, and a stronger culture of risk awareness across RJC. Lead, maintain, and mature the firm's established enterprise risk management framework and risk appetite statement. Work with stakeholders across the firm who own and lead their own risk mitigation strategies, aligning them to the enterprise framework and appetite statement. Conduct regular and continuous risk assessments across corporate and operational business units to identify emerging and existing risks. Present strategic risk profiles, mitigation metrics, and emerging trends to the Executive team and senior leadership. Legal Leadership & Contract Risk Strategy Lead the development and execution of RJC's legal and contract risk strategy, ensuring practical, consistent, and commercially balanced guidance across offices, regions, and practice areas. Provide senior-level advice and escalation support to principals, project leaders, and corporate teams on complex contracts, procurement documents, project delivery issues, disputes, and risk allocation. Develop a Project Risk review protocols and establish an oversight committee from operations to review major client contracts, joint ventures, sub-consultant and confidentiality agreements. Set firm-wide standards for managing contract risks, and lead the development and maintenance of contract templates, guidance notes, playbooks and training materials that improve consistency and decision quality across the firm. Support operations to minimize corporate exposure related to professional liability, errors and omissions (E&O), and design warranties. Provide oversight and audit of internal operational QA/QC processes. Project Risk, Claims & Dispute Leadership Lead legal and commercial risk review for major pursuits, strategic clients, high-risk projects, and non-standard contract terms, including advice on negotiation strategy and executive escalation. Provide strategic oversight of professional liability, errors and omissions, design responsibility, site-service, delay, change, payment, and dispute-related matters. Manage claims in collaboration with the operational l