Director Parks and Green Spaces

About the Role

Qiddiya is seeking a Director of Parks and Green Spaces to provide strategic leadership and oversight for all landscape, horticulture, irrigation, parks, green corridors, streetscapes, and public realm softscape assets across Qiddiya City. This full-time role, based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, involves establishing the green spaces operating model, setting standards, and ensuring landscaped assets are safe, sustainable, resilient, and visually appealing year-round. The Director will act as the senior technical authority for landscaping and irrigation operations, focusing on local horticultural practices, climate-appropriate planting, and water efficiency.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide strategic leadership and governance for green spaces, landscaping, horticulture, irrigation, parks, green corridors, streetscapes, and public realm softscape assets across Qiddiya City.
• Establish and maintain the green spaces operating model, including standards, policies, inspection routines, maintenance strategies, service levels, KPIs, reporting, and escalation governance.
• Lead the operation and maintenance of parks, gardens, medians, boulevards, public realm landscapes, recreational landscapes, and associated irrigation infrastructure to ensure safe, healthy, attractive, and guest-ready environments.
• Act as the senior technical authority for landscaping, horticulture, irrigation, and public realm softscape operations, ensuring designs, handovers, and operating practices are maintainable, sustainable, and aligned with local conditions.
• Drive sustainable landscape management, including water conservation, smart irrigation, climate-resilient planting, native and adaptive species strategies, biodiversity enhancement, green waste reduction, and plant health management.
• Provide senior operational input into design reviews, value engineering, project gateways, testing, commissioning, handover, and acceptance decisions for new landscape and irrigation assets.
• Oversee asset registers, lifecycle plans, condition assessments, replacement programs, risk registers, performance dashboards, and operational readiness activities for all green space and landscape assets.
• Direct contractor, consultant, and service provider performance through clear scopes of work, technical standards, audits, SLA/KPI management, commercial challenge, corrective action plans, and governance reviews.
• Manage annual operating and capital budgets, identifying cost optimization, resource planning, and service improvement opportunities without compromising safety, quality, sustainability, or guest experience.
• Build, lead, and develop the landscaping and green spaces team, setting clear priorities, developing capability, promoting accountability, and ensuring disciplined, evidence-based decision-making.

Qualifications and Experience

• Typically 12-15+ years of experience across landscaping, horticulture, irrigation, parks, public realm, environmental operations, facilities management, or city-scale O&M, including significant experience in a senior leadership role.
• Demonstrable experience leading large-scale landscape operations, public realm maintenance, irrigation networks, contractor governance, operational readiness, asset handover, and lifecycle planning.
• Strong experience with local horticultural practices, climate-appropriate planting, water-efficient landscape management, and plant species native to the Arabian Peninsula.
• Desirable experience within master-planned cities or communities, mixed-use developments, entertainment destinations, giga-projects, municipal environments, parks, public realm assets, or large-scale developments within Saudi Arabia or the GCC.

Work Environment

This role is based in Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and operates on a full-time basis within Qiddiya City. The Director will lead and develop a dedicated team focused on landscaping and green spaces.