Real Estate & Workplaces Lead

Real Estate & Workplaces Lead New York, NY • Los Angeles, CA • Austin, TX

Operations

In office

Full-time

About Nominal Nominal is building the connected test and operations platform powering the world's most advanced hardware systems, from spacecraft and autonomous vehicles to next-generation defense programs. Our platform gives hardware engineering teams a single place to ingest data, analyze performance, automate test execution, and collaborate across every phase of development, so they can move faster without sacrificing safety or precision. We're a fast-moving team that owns problems end-to-end, works across disciplines, and thrives at the intersection of hardware and software.

We serve top-tier commercial and defense customers, from autonomy leaders like Anduril and Shield AI to next-generation aerospace teams like Hermeus and REGENT, and performance engineering teams like Pratt Miller Motorsports, alongside mission partners within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force on programs where failure isn't an option. We're backed by Sequoia, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Lightspeed. Our team draws from SpaceX, Palantir, Anduril, Applied Intuition, Tesla, and other leading companies, united by a common mission: giving hardware engineers the tools to build the future with speed, safety, and confidence.

🏢 About the role Nominal is an in-person company growing across six offices: Los Angeles, Austin, New York City, Washington, DC, London, and Seattle (with more locations on the horizon!). Our offices are not just real estate—they are where teams solve hard problems, customers and investors experience Nominal, and our culture comes to life.

We're looking for a Real Estate & Workplaces Lead to own the strategy, expansion, and day-to-day performance of our global workplace portfolio. You'll shape where and how Nominal grows, leading office launches and buildouts, creating a consistent standard across locations, and making every office feel unmistakably Nominal. You'll balance long-range portfolio planning and financial discipline with hands-on execution. One day you may be presenting a site selection recommendation to leadership; the next, unblocking a buildout, walking a site, or fixing an employee experience issue before anyone has to ask.

This is a leadership role for a builder. You'll inherit an active, multi-location footprint and create the systems, team, and operating rhythm that can scale with Nominal. You'll partner closely with People, Finance, IT, Security, Design, Legal, and company leadership, while leading office managers and a network of brokers, landlords, architects, contractors, and vendors.

This role will be based in one of Nominal's primary U.S. offices (ideally NYC or LA initially) and requires regular travel across our portfolio, including international travel.

🚀 What you'll do

• Own the portfolio strategy: Build and maintain a multi-year real estate and workplace roadmap across Los Angeles, Austin, New York City, Washington, DC, London, Seattle, and future markets. Translate headcount plans, team needs, customer proximity, and business strategy into clear recommendations on capacity, location, timing, and investment.
• Lead real estate decisions end to end: Own market evaluation, broker management, site tours, financial modeling, letters of intent, lease negotiations, renewals, expansions, consolidations, and exits. Present options and tradeoffs clearly, make recommendations, and drive decisions to completion.
• Deliver offices from concept through stabilization: Lead design, permitting, construction, furniture, A/V, security, move planning, and launch. Build plans with clear milestones, owners, budgets, dependencies, and risks—and keep projects moving when conditions change.
• Set the Nominal workplace standard: Define what every Nominal office should look, feel, and operate like while preserving what makes each location distinct. Establish repeatable standards for space planning, conference rooms, A/V, signage, furniture, food, visitor experience, safety, accessibility, and day-to-day operations.
• Run reliable workplace operations: Ensure our offices are safe, functional, welcoming, inclusive, and consistently well operated. Build scalable playbooks, service levels, inspection routines, escalation paths, business continuity plans, and vendor-management systems.
• Own the budget and business cases: Manage workplace operating and capital budgets with discipline and transparency. Forecast spend and occupancy, track commitments and variances, negotiate strong commercial terms, and identify smart opportunities to improve quality or reduce cost.
• Use data to make better decisions: Create a clear view of capacity, utilization, cost per seat, project performance, service quality, and employee experience. Use the data to challenge assumptions, anticipate constraints, and improve the portfolio over time.
• Build and lead the team: Develop office managers and workplace partners across locations, set clear expectations, delegate real ownership, and create an operating model that supports strong local execution without sacrificing global consistency.
• Make the office a force multiplier: Partner with the People team and leaders to design workplace experiences that strengthen collaboration, onboarding, culture, and connection. Ensure that employees, candidates, customers, and partners feel Nominal's ambition and attention to detail when they walk through the door.
• Be the calm owner when things go sideways: Manage incidents, project risks, landlord issues, and competing priorities with urgency and sound judgment. Communicate early, bring options, and close the loop.

🔍 We're looking for someone with

• Deep real estate and workplace experience: 10+ years in corporate real estate, workplace, facilities, design and construction, or related functions, including meaningful responsibility for a multi-site portfolio.
• A track record of building and scaling: You've opened, expanded, relocated, or transformed scaling offices in a fast-growing company and can point to spaces and systems that became better because you owned them.
• Strong commercial and financial judgment: You're fluent in leases, occupancy planning, capital and operating budgets, financial models, and vendor negotiations. You can explain the tradeoffs behind a recommendation—not just the answer.
• Exceptional project leadership: You can run several complex projects across cities and time zones without losing the details. Your plans are clear, risks surface early, and stakeholders know what is happening before they have to ask.
• A high bar for physical experience: You notice what others miss. You care about how a room sounds, what a visitor notices when they enter, whether technology works seamlessly, and whether the space helps people do their best work.
• Systems thinking: You solve the immediate problem and build the playbook that prevents it from recurring. You know where global consistency matters and where local teams need flexibility.
• Clear, direct communication: You can write a crisp executive recommendation, negotiate firmly with a landlord, coach an office manager, and communicate a change warmly to employees.
• Low ego and high ownership: You're comfortable moving between strategy and execution. No task is beneath you when the outcome matters, and you build trust by doing what you said you would do.
• Strong cross-functional instincts: You know how to align Finance, People, IT, Security, Legal, Design, and business leaders around a decision, even when their priorities differ.
• Readiness to travel: You're able to travel regularly for site selection, buildouts, office visits, and team leadership across the U.S. and internationally.

⚡ Skills that supercharge us

• Experience leading an international office portfolio
• Experience with ground-up buildouts, major renovations, and headquarters projects
• Familiarity with workplace and portfolio tools for occupancy, space planning, lease administration, maintenance, and project tracking
• Experience building a workplace function, team, and operating model from an early stage

Great candidates rarely check every box. If this role excites you, we want to hear from you.

Compensation The base pay range for this role is $180,000 – $230,000 per year.

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This position requires access to information and technology that is subject to U.S. export controls. Your responses to the questions below will be used solely to determine your eligibility under U.S. law to receive information and materials subject to U.S. export controls. Are you any of the following “protected individual(s)” as defined in the Immigration and Naturalization Act, 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)? *

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Req ID: R141