Team Lead, Practice and Projects

Organization:

City of Calgary

Region:

Alberta

Application deadline:

January 28, 2026

Type:

Full Time

Category:

Public works & operations

Description Click here to view full screen

Description

The Team Lead, Practice and Projects plays a critical role in shaping how the Innovation Lab delivers its work. The Team Lead is responsible for leading people, stewarding professional practice, and overseeing the delivery of a portfolio of innovation projects. While not accountable for leading every project directly, the Team Lead provides direction, coaching, and quality oversight to ensure work is delivered to a high professional standard and aligned with organizational priorities.

The Team Lead supports and oversees innovation work that is often high complexity, high impact, and politically sensitive.

These challenges frequently involve:

Competing human needs and long standing issues that span administrative and political boundaries.
Complex partner and power dynamics across multiple business units and leadership levels.
High stakes decisions with potential impacts on Council, Calgarians, City reputation, and public trust.
Close alignment with senior leadership champions and corporate priority areas.

The Team Lead, Professional Practice & Projects leads a team to deliver complex, cross corporate innovation projects, stewarding professional practice, people leadership, and portfolio delivery across the Innovation Lab. Major duties include:

Lead and manage a team of up to ten innovation designers and innovation practitioners, including recruitment, onboarding, coaching, mentorship, performance management, and conflict resolution, while fostering a psychologically safe and creative work environment.
Act as a practice lead and coach for the Innovation Lab, guiding Lab staff in the effective application of human centered design, service design, Agile project management, customer experience, and systemic design within a public sector context.
Steward the Lab's professional practice by strengthening and maintaining high standards for the innovation tools, methodologies, and outputs used in designers work.
Evolve the Lab's professional practice through a strong vision and connection into emerging trends coming from local, national and international innovation and design communities.
Develop methods to ensure project quality, output consistency, solution scalability, and storytelling across portfolio projects, working with internal teams and external consultants to elevate the value of the Innovation Lab to the organization.
Lead project and portfolio management activities, including prioritization, workload and capacity planning, implementation and oversight of timely project delivery to ensure alignment with Lab strategic goals.
Identify, monitor, and mitigate delivery, practice, and capacity risks across innovation projects and service requests, advising senior leaders on implications for outcomes, timelines, and organizational impact.
Monitor and allocate budget and resource oversight for the project portfolio.
Build strong relationships and steward collaboration with contributors and leaders connected to the Lab's projects.
Represent the Lab in City wide initiatives, partnerships, and community events.