Manager Office of Emergency Management and Public Safety Innovation

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Design, manage, and continuously improve the City's public safety innovation framework, including idea intake, evaluation, piloting, scaling, and lifecycle management.
• Establish and oversee an innovation portfolio spanning technology, data, policy, and operational models.
• Develop innovation roadmaps aligned with public safety strategy, emergency management priorities, and executive leadership goals.
• Build formal processes for experimentation, pilot design, structured learning, and post-implementation evaluation.
• Establish innovation performance measures focused on operational impact, adoption, organizational readiness, and risk.
• Lead structured problem discovery efforts with police, fire, EMS, and emergency management teams.
• Conduct operational assessments, needs analyses, and systems mapping to identify innovation opportunities.
• Translate frontline challenges into scoped innovation initiatives, pilots, and applied research projects.
• Monitor emerging trends, technologies, and practices relevant to public safety and emergency management.
• Oversee multidisciplinary innovation initiatives from concept through pilot, evaluation, and transition to operations.
• Lead cross-functional teams involving public safety, IT, legal, finance, vendors, universities, and regional partners.
• Design contained trials, exercises, and proof-of-concepts to test feasibility, operational value, and organizational impact.
• Develop business cases, implementation strategies, and transition plans for innovations entering operational environments.
• Partner with IT, legal, risk management, and executive leadership to ensure innovation initiatives align with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, data governance, procurement, and public accountability standards.
• Support the development of review, approval, and evaluation processes for new technologies and decision-support systems.
• Ensure innovation initiatives integrate with emergency management doctrine, interoperability standards, and continuity planning.
• Advise leadership on organizational readiness, workforce implications, and governance considerations tied to innovation.
• Serve as a senior emergency management leader supporting mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts.
• Maintain and advance the City's Emergency Operations Plan, ensuring alignment with evolving operational capabilities.
• Lead innovation-informed training, exercises, and after-action learning processes.
• Serve as Emergency Operations Center Director when activated.
• Cook up with local, regional, state, and federal partners on emergency management initiatives.
• Build and manage partnerships with regional agencies, universities, vendors, and innovation organizations.
• Identify and pursue grants and pilot funding aligned with innovation and emergency management priorities.
• Represent the City on innovation, emergency management, and public safety task forces and working groups.

Minimum and Preferred Entrance Qualifications

• Seven (7) to ten (10) years of progressively responsible professional experience in innovation leadership, emergency management, public safety operations, technology-enabled transformation, organizational change, or a closely related field.
• Completion of FEMA Incident Command System coursework (ICS-100, 200, 300, 400; IS-700; IS-800) and FEMA Professional Development Series (PDS) is required, or must be obtained within six (6) months of appointment.
• Additional training is preferred, such as ICS Instructor certification, public information/media relations, advanced incident command, emergency management grant administration, Professional emergency management credentials (CEM/AEM, APS).