As joint Head of Design, Spencer de Grey shares responsibility for all Foster + Partners' projects at the practice he joined in 1973. De Grey set up the Hong Kong office in 1979, for the lauded HSBC project and was the director in charge of Stansted Airport. He also worked on BBC Radio Centre and the Royal Academy Sackler Galleries in London. Since becoming a partner in 1991, he has overseen a broad range of projects, including the Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt; the Law Faculty at Cambridge University; the Great Court at the British Museum; The Sage Gateshead; HM Treasury, Whitehall; and nine City Academy schools in the UK. 

In the US, he has been responsible for cultural projects including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Winspear Opera House in Dallas; and the courtyard at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Elsewhere, his projects include the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong; the Slussen redevelopment, Stockholm and the Museum of Roman Antiquities in Narbonne. 

De Grey is a visiting professor of design at the University of Cambridge, and president of the Building Centre Trust. In 1997 he was made a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List and in 2008 was elected a Royal Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts. Bloomberg European HQ has won the 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize.