Real Estate & Workplaces Lead

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.

Responsibilities

• 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