OpenAI

Development Lead

OpenAI • $125K — $150K *
US-AnywhereRemote in United States
Real Estate & Construction
5 - 7 years of experience
Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 6+ years of experience in land development or related project delivery fields.
  • Proven track record in advancing large-scale facility programs through various phases.
  • Strong skills in evaluating power pathways and utility interconnection.
  • Highly organized, able to convert ambiguity into actionable plans.

Responsibilities

  • Own the entire project development path post-screening.
  • Validate power pathways with utility partners and assess cost implications.
  • Create disciplined action lists for each development phase with clear deadlines.
  • Translate site constraints into a detailed building-level deployment plan.
  • Coordinate requirements across various internal teams to ensure project closure and execution.
  • Define and govern diligence processes ensuring timelines and decision criteria are met.
  • Manage external vendors and consultants to align outputs with project goals.

Benefits

  • Collaborative work environment with cross-functional teams.
  • Opportunities to work on large-scale and impactful projects.
  • Access to advanced project management tools and methodologies.
  • Professional development and continuous learning opportunities.
Full Job Description
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.


About OpenAI

OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company was founded in 2015 by a group of technology leaders, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and John Schulman. OpenAI's mission is to develop and promote friendly AI for the betterment of humanity. The company has developed a number of cutting-edge AI technologies, including GPT-3, a language processing system that can generate human-like text. OpenAI has received funding from a number of high-profile investors, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Learn more about OpenAI
Size
100 employees
Industry
Information Technology
Founded
2015
* Ladders Estimates

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