TitleChief Operating Officer (COO)

Job description

As BIG deepens its presence in global markets and reckons with the possibilities of artificial intelligence, it seeks a Chief Operating Officer. An executive of rare scope: an operator of unusual discipline, a collaborator of real authority, and a leader comfortably fluent in the technologies now reshaping both the built environment and the organisations that produce it.

Working closely with the CEO and the partner group, the COO will be responsible for the coherent running of the firm across our 7 main offices and additional presences in the world. This is not a role of maintenance, but one of transformation. It calls for a restless appetite for improvement, a systematic mind, and the conviction that operational excellence and creative ambition reinforce rather than oppose one another. BIG wishes to be the most advanced AI-enabled architectural organisation in the world, and the COO will be the principal agent of that ambition.

Global Operations
Oversee the day-to-day operations of BIG across all international studios, ensuring that quality, efficiency, and professional conduct are upheld everywhere.
Build, improve, and maintain the processes, systems, and governance through which the firm wins and delivers its work, from the first commission to final completion.
Identify where structures, workflows, or habits are slowing the firm down, and address them with discipline while protecting the creative conditions that make BIG distinct.
Act as a unifying force across studios, geographies, and cultures, nurturing a shared sense of purpose, mutual responsibility, and pride in the work.

Strategic Partnership with the CEO
Serve as the CEO’s closest partner in running the firm, turning strategic ambition into operational action.
Represent the CEO’s priorities across the organisation and, where relevant, with clients, external partners, and institutions.
Offer clear and candid counsel on strategy, resourcing, and risk, grounded in a deep understanding of how the firm operates.
Sit as a full and active member of the executive leadership team, helping shape the direction of BIG as a global practice.

Artificial Intelligence and Technological Leadership
This dimension of the role sits at the heart of BIG’s future ambitions. BIG aims to become the most advanced AI-enabled architectural organisation in the world, and the COO will lead that transformation.
Bring deep, practical fluency in artificial intelligence: what it can do today, where it is heading next, and how it is reshaping professional practice across design, engineering, urbanism, and the leadership of complex creative organisations.
Define and lead BIG’s AI strategy in close consultation with the CIO and the Design Technology Director, driving firm-wide adoption of AI across operations, business development, financial team as well as in design, research, and project delivery. Ensure implementation proceeds with both ambition and discipline.
Cultivate a culture of technological curiosity and experimentation throughout the firm, building AI literacy across every level of the organisation while assessing emerging tools with sound judgement and distinguishing genuine transformative value from passing novelty.
Develop partnerships with technology companies, academic institutions, and research communities, ensuring that BIG remains at the forefront of applied intelligence in architecture and urbanism.

People and Organisation
Work closely with studio leadership and People & Culture to attract, develop, and retain the talent BIG needs across its global studios.
Champion an organisational culture where operational discipline and creative freedom strengthen one another.
Oversee the professional development of operational staff across all BIG offices, ensuring that expertise and capacity grow in step with the firm’s ambitions.

Financial and Business Performance
Partner with the Chief Financial Officer and Managing Directors to maintain rigorous oversight of project economics, studio profitability, and the broader financial health of the practice.
Drive improvements in project delivery that raise both the quality of outcomes and the commercial sustainability of the firm.
Support the pursuit of new commissions and market opportunities, especially where strong operational capability gives BIG a decisive edge.

The Candidate
The ideal candidate will combine the operational authority of a seasoned executive with the technological intelligence of a practitioner who has engaged seriously and practically with artificial intelligence. Familiarity with the rhythms of a creatively driven professional practice, whether in architecture, design, art, media, or comparable discipline, is an advantage but not a necessity.

Essential Experience and Qualities
A distinguished record of operational leadership in an organisation of comparable scale and complexity, ideally one spanning several international locations.
Demonstrable expertise in artificial intelligence, not as an observer but as a practitioner who has deployed AI to material effect within a professional organisation.
An understanding of, or genuine affinity for, the architectural and built environment sector, and an appreciation of the particular character of a practice driven by creative ambition.
Exceptional interpersonal intelligence, with the capacity to operate with authority and subtlety across cultures, disciplines, and levels of seniority.
A cast of mind at once systematic and adaptive, comfortable with both structural precision and the productive ambiguity inherent in creative work.
The resilience and temperament to lead a complex global organisation through a period of technological and strategic change.

Disposition
Beyond experience and qualifications, BIG seeks a person of genuine intellectual depth and execution skill: someone energized by the making of great work, who understands that pragmatic utopianism depends on an organisation capable of carrying its ambition, and who will help shape the firm with the same rigour, imagination, and sense of possibility that BIG brings to architecture.

BIG offers:

• A full-time position with high impact and visibility
• Possibility for further education and skill development
• An international workplace with colleagues from more than 70 nationalities
• Social events and a strong office culture
• Competitive salary and pension scheme based on experience and qualifications
• Healthy, high-quality lunch prepared by in-house chefs, with flexible options

How to Apply
We kindly ask candidates to apply via the career page on our website by uploading their expression of interest, together with a resumé and a concise statement of intent. Interviews are conducted on an ongoing basis.

Diversity has been part of our DNA since BIG’s foundation. A multitude of cultures and backgrounds creates a new point of reference which leads to amazing insights. At BIG, we celebrate and support diversity because it makes our team, work and the built environment better. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and take affirmative action to employ equally regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

About BIG
[xxxxx] is among the most inventive architectural practices in the world. Founded in Copenhagen by Bjarke Ingels, it now numbers more than 800 architects, designers, engineers, urbanists, and thinkers across studios in Copenhagen, New York, London, Barcelona, Shanghai, Dubai, Los Angeles and Zurich
The firm works across the whole of the built environment under a framework LEAPP: Landscape, Engineering, Architecture, Product, and Planning. Its guiding philosophy, “pragmatic utopianism”, holds that architecture need not choose between idealism and rigour, and seeks instead the ground where the two meet. That outlook has yielded such buildings as CopenHill, VIA 57 West, the LEGO House, the Danish Maritime Museum, and Superkilen, with current commissions including Wildflower Studios in New York.
The firm is led by Founder and Creative Director Bjarke Ingels, Chief Executive Officer Sheela Maini Søgaard, and a partnership of senior architects and designers spread across its global studios.