Development Manager

Fluidstack; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 186,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Retirement plan

Health insurance

Paid time off

Job summary

Fluidstack is building frontier AI infrastructure and seeks a hands-on leader to run technical due diligence on sites from observation to groundbreaking. You will guide environmental and civil engineers, assess buildability, and author clear go/no-go conclusions while coordinating cross-functional teams across multiple sites.

You will negotiate contracts, manage budgets and schedules, and own milestones from early land assessment to site access.

Qualifications

• Experience conducting technical due diligence on land and leading site assessments.
• Ability to read traffic impact studies and challenge engineers when needed.
• Experience negotiating and organizing contracts and taking ownership.

Responsibilities

• Run technical due diligence on sites from handoff to break ground, guiding engineers through assessments.
• Make go/no-go decisions on buildability, timing, and budget with risk awareness.
• Direct contract negotiations and join risk-profile decisions at leadership level.
• Lead the civil engineer, architect, and GC; own budgets, milestones, and site access dates across multiple sites.

Job description

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

We hire people who care deeply about this problem space. If that is you, please apply!

How We Operate

• Be a barrel. Full autonomy. Own things end to end, take on scope without being asked, no permission required to operate outside your core role.
• Insane urgency. We drive everything forward as fast as possible.
• Reason from first principles. Challenge every assumption. Zero analogy thinking, no egos, the best idea wins.
• Love of the game. The frontier of AI is the most interesting problem of our time. We put in long hours at high intensity to push the frontier forward.
• Build something that actually matters. If you're going to spend your time, spend it on something that matters to the world.

The Construction Team

Examples of key problems the team is working on

• Put gigawatts in the ground, faster than anyone has. We're delivering one of the largest data center buildouts of its kind, with many sites running at once. Traditional construction management breaks at this scale, so we're building the model that replaces it.
• Throw out traditional construction and invent how gigawatts get built. Tons of tools, layers of process, and administrative drag don't get you there. You'll strip all of that out and win by solving the real problem and beating the goal, not by managing toward it.
• Productize the data center so we can build it a thousand times. You'll turn one-off construction into a repeatable, modular build, where the hundredth site goes up faster and cleaner than the first. That repeatability is the only way to reach the scale we're targeting.

Role Scope

• Run technical due diligence on every site from Site Acquisitions' handoff to break ground, directing environmental and civil engineers through environmental site assessments, land and boundary surveys, and traffic impact studies.
• Make the go or no-go call on dirt: buildable, on time, on budget, with no deal-killers or permanent risks before we transact.
• Negotiate and organize contracts directly, joining risk-profile decisions and taking big commercials off leadership's plate.
• Bring on the civil engineer, architect, and GC, and own the master budget, milestone schedule, and floor access dates across five or more sites at once.

What We're Looking For

The below is a starting point. We always make space for exceptional people, so if you don't fit this role exactly, tell us where you would.

• You've personally run technical due diligence on land and can walk site identification to break ground in order, from the first environmental assessments and land surveys on, saying what you did yourself at each step.
• You've directed environmental and civil engineers and read traffic impact studies closely enough to challenge them.
• You've decided what kills a deal and what is acceptable risk, and told leadership a site was clean enough to transact.
• You've negotiated or organized contracts yourself.
• You run several projects at once on your own and bring leadership a decision.
• Bonus: Owner-side land development (greenfield industrial, commercial, energy). Hyperscale data center development or pre-construction. Utility and mineral rights diligence (water, power, interconnection). Modular or prefabricated delivery.

Salary & Benefits

• Competitive total compensation package (salary + equity).
• Retirement or pension plan, in line with local norms.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Generous PTO policy, in line with local norms.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency.

Fluidstack is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Fluidstack will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.

Compensation Range: $186K - $240K