Development Lead
About the Team
OpenAI is building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Site Readiness & Development team owns the upstream diligence and development work required to convert powered-land opportunities into executable infrastructure options.
About the Role
The Development Lead owns the development path after a site clears initial screening. This role validates the viable power pathway, turns site constraints into a building-level deployment plan that makes clear when each building can deploy, and runs the phase-by-phase action list that closes the decisions, dependencies, and evidence gaps needed to make a site controllable and executable.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the stage-gate path from exclusivity and commercial terms through desktop diligence, confirmatory diligence, site closing, and handoff into design, construction, and operations.
- Validate power pathways with Power and utility partners, including service options, interconnection and delivery sequencing, readiness assumptions, schedule exposure, cost implications, and decision points.
- Turn each development phase into a disciplined action list with owners, deadlines, closure criteria, open evidence, and escalation paths; drive the list to closure rather than simply reporting status.
- Translate power, land, civil, environmental, access, entitlement, and permitting constraints into a building-level deployment plan with clear sequencing and target deployment timing for each building.
- Coordinate site access, exclusivity, LOI, commercial terms, financing assumptions, and closing requirements with Commercial, Legal, Finance, Power, Land, and other partner teams.
- Define the desktop diligence scope, expected 15–30 day deliverables, and go / no-go criteria; then govern the 90–120 day confirmatory diligence plan.
- Set and track ECDs for easements, offsite improvements, well and pipeline locating, environmental studies, water-well testing, geotechnical reports, additional land, incentives, and other site-specific workstreams.
- Scope and manage diligence vendors and consultants, keeping their outputs tied to decisions, schedule, cost, action-list closure, and residual risk.
- Maintain the integrated development schedule, budget implications, dependency tracker, risk register, mitigation plan, and executive escalation cadence.
- Deliver executive-ready advance, defer, or stop recommendations and prepare the readiness package for transition into design, construction, and operations.
Qualifications
- 6+ years in land development, infrastructure development, data center development, energy-project development, electrical, mechanical, civil or environmental engineering, or related project delivery.
- Experience advancing large-scale facility programs through early planning, power validation, phased development, site closing, and readiness handoff.
- Strong ability to evaluate power pathways and translate utility, interconnection, and delivery findings into schedule, cost, and deployment implications.
- Highly organized operator who can convert ambiguous diligence into owner-based action lists, closure criteria, critical paths, and executive decisions.