Assistant City Manager Job Description

An Assistant City Manager is the second-ranking appointed executive in a council-manager city: the person who runs a slice of city hall for the city manager, and all of it when the manager is away. The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) says the duties of an assistant manager vary widely, depending on the size of the jurisdiction, the needs of the community, the strengths of the manager and the skills the assistant brings. Some assistants work as the manager's second in charge, with all department heads reporting to them; others manage specific projects or departments. ICMA adds that most assistant managers handle a few specific functions of the local government, such as personnel, risk management or public relations.

Cities attach several titles to this seat, among them deputy city manager and assistant town manager. ICMA's own shorthand for the group is "assistants," a catch-all covering deputy, assistant and assistant-to positions in both cities and counties.

The terms of the appointment shape everything else. The City of Lincoln, California's class specification is one example: the Assistant City Manager is an at-will position, appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the city manager, and serves as acting city manager as required. The job is built around one working relationship. The assistant carries the manager's priorities into departments, reports back what is breaking, and protects the manager's standing with the council by making sure the staff work behind each agenda item holds up.

A typical week mixes four kinds of work.

Department oversight. The assistant meets with the directors in the portfolio (finance, community development, IT/GIS and parks and recreation are the examples in Lincoln's specification), reviews their measures and decides which problems need the manager's attention. When two departments disagree about who owns a project or a budget line, the assistant settles it.

Council and agenda work. Staff reports pass through the manager's office before they reach the dais. The assistant edits them, checks the numbers with finance, presents some items in person and fields follow-up questions from council members between meetings.

Budget and capital planning. In budget season the assistant tests department requests against revenue forecasts, helps build the recommended operating and capital budgets, and defends the tradeoffs in public study sessions.

Special assignments. A new fire station, a parking district, a union contract, a software conversion or the council's goal-setting retreat can land on this desk because it crosses departments. So can the resident complaint that has already climbed past a department head.

Emergency work sits on top. When the emergency operations center opens for a flood, wildfire or water main break, the assistant may run the policy group, brief elected officials and keep routine business moving.

What separates the post from the top job is final authority. Lincoln's specification distinguishes the two by giving the city manager full administrative responsibility for city operations and functions. The assistant exercises that authority on loan, and each stint as acting city manager is a short test of the top job.

No professional license is required for this job. ICMA states that there is no required path into local government management: no tests to pass and no certification to earn. What managers and councils look for is a record of running parts of a city and a reputation for straight answers in public.

Education

• A bachelor's degree is the floor. Lincoln's specification asks for one in accounting, economics, finance, business administration or a related field, and prefers a master's.
• A graduate degree in public administration, public policy or business is the usual next step. Among California city managers profiled in the Rose Institute's 2025 survey, 64% held a master's-level degree.
• Useful coursework, per ICMA: public finance, microeconomics, statistics, planning, conflict resolution, organizational behavior and program evaluation.

Experience As a rough guide, candidates arrive with 8 to 15 years in local government. Lincoln's specification is specific: five years of increasingly responsible management experience in municipal government, including three years as head of a city or county department or major division. Common routes in:

• Management or budget analyst in the city manager's office, then assistant to the city manager
• Department director (finance, community development, public works, human resources) moving into a multi-department portfolio
• Assistant or deputy in a smaller city, then a lateral move to a larger one
• Mid-career entry from the private sector, the military or another level of government; ICMA says private-sector professionals with a management, financial or analytical background can transition to local government

Credentials

• ICMA Credentialed Manager (ICMA-CM), awarded by ICMA through its Voluntary Credentialing Program
• Certified Public Manager (CPM), earned through programs accredited by the National Certified Public Manager Consortium
• Certified Government Financial Manager (CGFM), awarded by AGA, for assistants whose portfolio centers on finance

ICMA members also agree to the association's Code of Ethics, which governs their conduct.

Skills that get tested

• Reading a budget and spotting the weak assumption in a revenue forecast
• Writing a staff report a council member can absorb in five minutes
• Managing department heads who were peers last year
• Labor relations: meet-and-confer sessions, grievances and costing a contract offer
• Keeping composure through hostile public comment
• Working inside open meetings and public records law, including on text messages and email
• Running an emergency operations center policy group under the Incident Command System

BLS does not count assistant city managers on their own. The closest federal data sits under chief executives: the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics row for chief executives in local government, excluding schools and hospitals, covered 14,730 jobs with a median wage of $142,710. That row mixes city managers, county administrators and other local chief executives with their deputies, so it frames the field rather than counting this title.

Projections exist only for the broad group. The Occupational Outlook Handbook projects that employment of top executives will grow 5 percent from 2025 to 2035, a rate BLS calls faster than the average for all occupations, with about 304,100 openings a year on average. Those numbers cover executives in private companies and every level of government, not municipal deputies, so they are context rather than a forecast for this post.

The number of assistant posts depends on how cities are organized. ICMA reports that more than half of U.S. cities with a population of more than 10,000 are run by a combination of appointed professional administrators and elected officials. ICMA also says many managers, particularly those in larger communities, have assistants who take on substantial administrative responsibilities, while in smaller jurisdictions the manager may do most or all of the tasks. For a job seeker, that means the title exists only where a government has chosen this structure and funds a second executive in the manager's office.

The National League of Cities framed AI in a February 4, 2026 article as an organizational question for city governments: who, if anyone, is responsible for overseeing it as it cuts across departments, data systems and workforce practices. NLC reported that a small but growing number of cities are creating dedicated AI leadership roles, sometimes called chief AI officers. Seattle appointed its first City AI Officer in late 2025, placing the role in its Information Technology Department, and Louisville, Ky., named its first Chief AI Officer in December 2025; Louisville's first AI pilot focused on the permitting and development review process. For an assistant city manager who oversees IT or internal services, that can mean deciding who owns AI policy, which pilots get approved, and how results are reported to the council.

Practical points for anyone aiming at the job:

• Search every variant of the title, including deputy city manager, assistant town manager and assistant county manager, because the same seat carries different names.
• Openings appear on city websites, ICMA's job center and state municipal league sites, and some recruitments are run by executive search firms.
• Where the post is at-will, as in Lincoln, a change of city manager can change the assistant's job as well; a new manager may bring in a different deputy.
• A portfolio that includes budget, a major capital project and at least one hard labor or community issue gives a candidate concrete stories for the next interview, whether for a larger assistant post or a first manager job.

Dear Ms. Alvarez and Members of the Selection Panel,

Please accept my application for Assistant City Manager with the City of Riverbend. For the past six years I have served as Finance and Administrative Services Director for the City of Cedar Hollow, a full-service city of 62,000 where I oversee budget, purchasing, human resources and information technology with a staff of 38.

Three pieces of work from Cedar Hollow speak most directly to your posting.

First, I rebuilt our budget process after two years of mid-year shortfalls. I moved departments to a five-year forecast, added a quarterly variance report for the council, and held a reserve policy hearing that ended with a unanimous vote. We closed the last two fiscal years with revenue within two percent of the adopted budget.

Second, I led the replacement of our 20-year-old financial and payroll system. The project crossed every department, so I chaired a steering group of department heads, kept the council finance committee informed monthly, and delayed go-live by one quarter when testing showed payroll errors. Nobody missed a paycheck at cutover.

Third, I served as the city's lead negotiator with our general employees' association during a contract that started with a ninety-day impasse. We reached a three-year agreement that the council adopted and the membership ratified, and both sides still meet quarterly on workload issues.

I hold a Master of Public Administration and have served as acting city manager four times during the manager's leave. Those weeks taught me that the job is mostly about keeping department heads moving and the council informed before they read about a problem elsewhere.

Riverbend's goals for downtown housing and its upcoming capital program are the kind of cross-department work I want to spend the next part of my career on. I would welcome the chance to discuss how I could support your manager and council.

Sincerely,

Jordan Reyes