Employee-owned collective of landscape architecture and urban design studios
SWA operates as eight independent landscape architecture and urban design practices under shared ownership. The tech stack is CAD-heavy—AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, Rhino dominate—with active adoption of Revit and Rhino suggesting a shift toward parametric and BIM-integrated design workflows. Design roles comprise the vast majority of open positions, with hiring velocity accelerating; the pain-point cluster around inconsistent marketing resources and fragmented asset management across studios signals operational friction in coordination.
SWA is a long-standing, employee-owned collective of eight independent design studios based in Sausalito, CA, each practicing landscape architecture, planning, and urban design. The organization serves institutional and commercial clients through master planned communities and other large-scale design projects. With 201–500 employees spread across multiple studios, SWA coordinates work through biannual principals' meetings and shared deliverables (annual projects documentation). The firm is actively hiring across design roles with accelerating velocity, concentrated in the United States.
SWA's core stack includes AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, and ArcGIS for design and planning. They also use Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop), Bluebeam Revu for coordination, and Lumion and Enscape for visualization.
SWA is headquartered in Sausalito, CA. The firm is a privately held, employee-owned collective of eight independent studios.
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