Description
Compensation
The base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The salary range for this position is $225K – $385K, and total compensation also includes generous equity, performance-related bonus(es) for eligible employees, and the following benefits.
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family, with employer contributions to Health Savings Accounts
- Pre-tax accounts for Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter expenses (parking and transit)
- 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
- Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents), plus paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
- Paid time off: flexible PTO for exempt employees and up to 15 days annually for non-exempt employees
- 13+ paid company holidays, and multiple paid coordinated company office closures throughout the year for focus and recharge, plus paid sick or safe time (1 hour per 30 hours worked, or more, as required by applicable state or local law)
- Mental health and wellness support
- Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
- Annual learning and development stipend to fuel your professional growth
- Daily meals in our offices, and meal delivery credits as eligible
- Relocation support for eligible employees
- Additional taxable fringe benefits, such as charitable donation matching and wellness stipends, may also be provided.
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.