Business Development, Data Centers

Light; United States; Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Light is building the digital energy infrastructure for the next century of power. We’re hiring a senior business development lead for data centers to own the segment—identify hyperscalers, operators, and campus developers, and shape how we engage with decision-makers inside them.

You’ll map the landscape, build cross-functional relationships across power, economics, community affairs, and entitlements, and turn partnerships into measurable programs that scale.

Qualifications

• Experienced on the other side of the table.
• An authentic relationship builder, not a professional networker.
• Unusually perceptive in multiple contexts.
• An explorer who can build new structures while selling.

Responsibilities

• Find the right partners. Map the landscape of hyperscalers, operators, and campus developers, and engage the ones whose objectives line up with ours.
• Build relationships across functions: Power, economic development, community affairs, entitlements, site leadership.
• Share what we learn at industry events, trade groups, and policy researchers to broaden credibility.
• Turn relationships into signed partnerships. Define the problem, construct the program: a flexible load pilot, retail supply around a campus, a DER package, CBA language.
• Bring the market back to Light by shaping the industry view and what we should build next.

Job description

About Us

The world is electrifying. As we plug in more devices and services, we need new ways to connect to power.

About Us

The world is electrifying. As we plug in more devices and services, we need new ways to connect to power. The traditional, one-size-fits-all utility approach, with complicated bills and frustrating customer service, no longer works. At Light, we make it easy to get affordable, renewable electricity by embedding power with the products that consumers already use, from the companies they love. Light's mission is to power a sustainable and abundant energy future for everyone. We do it by making any company able to sell electricity. With Light's utility-as-API platform, companies from automakers and solar providers to real estate and beyond can offer their own, integrated electricity plans. Imagine purchasing an electric vehicle that includes unlimited home charging, or solar panels that come bundled with any excess energy you might need from the grid. We're building the flexible future where clean energy shows up wherever customers already are. We're a Series A company based in Austin, TX. We've found meaningful traction and are now investing aggressively in growth. Join us in building the digital energy infrastructure for the next century of power.

The role

Campuses need power faster than the grid can deliver it, and the communities hosting them fear absorbing the cost. Light is a licensed retailer, and our platform makes structures possible that haven't existed before: flexible load arrangements that let a campus grow without adding to peak demand, retail supply for the neighborhoods around a site, community DER packages, and household electricity benefits written into community benefit agreements. Developers are building the first of these with us now. We build programs where the value on both sides is real and measurable, and pass on the ones that are only optics. Light is hiring its first business development lead for data centers. You'll own the segment: which hyperscalers, operators, and campus developers we engage with, how we reach the people making energy decisions inside them, and what we build together.

• Find the right partners. Map the landscape of hyperscalers, operators, and campus developers, and engage the ones whose objectives line up with ours.
• Build relationships across functions. Power, economic development, community affairs, entitlements, site leadership. Find where the problems sit and co‑develop with the person who owns them.
• Share what we learn. Bring these programs to industry events, trade groups, and policy researchers, so more of the industry knows what's possible and what makes a program credible.
• Turn relationships into signed partnerships. Jointly define the problem, then construct the program: a flexible load pilot, retail supply around a campus, a DER package, CBA language.
• Bring the market back to Light. Turn what you hear into a clear point of view on where the industry is going and what we should build next.

In six months, success looks like: partnerships live in retail choice markets, spanning more than one of these structures, and delivering measurably for both the campus and the community around it.

You would describe yourself as

• Experienced on the other side of the table. You've worked at a hyperscaler, campus developer, or operator, in a seat that touched power, community, or economic development. You know what a proposal needs to survive an internal review.
• An authentic relationship builder, not a professional networker. You work with a broad range of personalities, and your relationships outlast the opportunities that started them.
• Unusually perceptive. You're comfortable in any number of contexts: a site team, a structuring session with an executive, a utility's front office, a public meeting in a host community.
• An explorer. Ambiguous problems and opaque institutions interest you rather than frustrate you. You're building structures that don't exist yet, and shaping them while you sell.
• Driven by impact. This work is on the ground before the results are visible, and you're motivated by what gets built rather than by title.
• Experienced. 10-15 years, enough to have owned significant relationships end to end and to be seen as a peer by an executive.
• Comfortable on the road. Roughly 50% travel to sites, events, and meet with partners.