This is an opportunity to lead one of the City’s most visible and community-facing portfolios while helping define how public services, facilities, programs, and partnerships evolve to meet the needs of a growing and changing northern capital.
Yellowknife combines the influence of a territorial capital with the accessibility and authenticity of a close-knit community. Set on the shores of Great Slave Lake, the city offers a vibrant cultural scene, year-round recreation, modern amenities, and immediate access to the outdoors.
The Opportunity
Reporting to the City Manager and serving as a member of the Senior Management Committee, the Director provides strategic leadership across community programs, recreation, parks, public facilities, library services, and homelessness initiatives. The role leads four direct reports and approximately 57 indirect reports.
The Director will:
- Set a clear strategic direction for the department and translate Council priorities into practical results
- Strengthen service standards, operational accountability, performance measurement, and long-term planning
- Lead departmental budgeting, forecasting, resource allocation, and financial stewardship
- Build management capacity, clarify expectations, and support employee development and succession planning
- Guide the responsible planning and stewardship of public facilities, parks, programs, and community assets
- Foster strong relationships with Indigenous governments and organizations, community partners, other governments, user groups, businesses, and residents
- Contribute to corporate strategy, emergency readiness, organizational improvement, and cross-departmental collaboration
- Encourage innovation while ensuring services remain reliable, accessible, inclusive, and responsive
The mandate calls for a leader who can balance immediate service demands with long-term thinking, community expectations with fiscal responsibility, and operational consistency with thoughtful change.
The Leader We Are Looking For
You are a strategic and service-oriented executive who sees possibility in complexity.
You bring sound judgment, political acuity, financial discipline, and the ability to lead through change and public scrutiny. You are equally comfortable advising Council, collaborating with senior colleagues, supporting managers, and engaging openly with residents and community partners.
You do not need to be the technical expert in every area of the portfolio. More important is your ability to lead subject-matter experts, build a cohesive management team, use evidence to guide decisions, and create a culture of accountability, inclusion, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Candidates should bring a relevant university degree, at least 10 years of progressively responsible experience, and significant senior leadership experience involving multidisciplinary teams, budgets, programs, facilities, or public-facing services. Experience in municipal government, recreation, facilities, libraries, homelessness initiatives, unionized environments, Indigenous relations, or intergovernmental partnerships would be an asset.
Why Yellowknife. Why now.
Few municipal leadership roles offer this breadth of impact.
The next Director will influence the services and spaces that support recreation, learning, inclusion, community connection, public life, and wellbeing. The role also offers the opportunity to strengthen how the City plans, collaborates, measures performance, and prepares for the future.
This is your opportunity to lead where your decisions are visible, your relationships matter, and your impact can be felt across an entire community.
