Spencer de Grey is a senior partner, sharing design responsibility for all projects in the office as joint Head of Design.

He studied architecture at Cambridge University under Sir Leslie Martin. On leaving Cambridge in 1969, he worked for the London Borough of Merton, being responsible for one of the first Middle schools in the country.

He joined Foster Associates in 1973, continuing his work in education on the Palmerston Special School in Liverpool. In 1979 he set up Foster Associates' Hong Kong office, to work on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. He returned to London In 1981, becoming the director in charge of Stansted Airport, which he saw through to completion in 1991. During this period, he also worked on the BBC Radio Centre, Langham Place, and was responsible for the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts, both in London.

Since his partnership in 1991, he has overseen a wide range of projects, including the Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt, the Law Faculty at Cambridge University, the Great Court at the British Museum, the Great Glasshouse at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, the redevelopment of Dresden Station, The Sage (Music Centre) Gateshead, HM Treasury in Whitehall, nine new City Academy schools in the UK and Walbrook Square, a major redevelopment in the City of London.

He is also responsible for a number of projects in the USA including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the new Winspear Opera House in Dallas, Avery Fisher Hall at New York's Lincoln Center and the competition-winning scheme for the National Portrait Gallery courtyard at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Recent competition wins include the masterplan for Slussen, Stockholm and the reworking of the New York Public Library, New York.

He lectures widely, is the architectural advisor for the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, Chairman of the Building Centre Trust and Chairman of the Cambridge University School of Architecture Advisory Board. He was made a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours of 1997 and was elected a Royal Academician in December 2008.