Director, Development Permitting & Environmental

talenenergy; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Talen Energy seeks a Director of Development Permitting & Environmental to lead owner-side environmental development and permitting across gas turbine, BESS, and data center opportunities. You will shape screening, diligence, and schedules to improve project viability, schedule certainty, and investment readiness.

Reporting to the Chief Asset Development Officer, the role requires coordinating with Corporate Environmental and external consultants, managing budgets, and ensuring compliant permit

Responsibilities

• Lead environmental development and permitting for owner-side projects including screening, diligence, and strategy.
• Coordinate with internal teams and external consultants to advance permits through FID and execution.
• Manage air-permitting strategy, regulatory analyses, and permit applications.
• Oversee Phase I/II environmental site assessments, ecological reviews, and wetland delineations.
• Lead engagement with EPA, state agencies, and regulatory bodies, and manage public notice and hearings as needed.
• Integrate environmental requirements into project planning, engineering, procurement, and construction.

Job description

We are seeking a Director, Development Permitting & Environmental to lead the owner's-side environmental development and permitting capability supporting Talen Energy's power generation, battery storage, and digital infrastructure portfolio. The role owns early environmental screening, site-specific diligence, permitting strategy and schedule, agency engagement, and acquisition of approvals needed to advance projects from site evaluation through Final Investment Decision (FID) and transition to execution. The Director will convert environmental and regulatory complexity into practical recommendations that improve project viability, schedule certainty, and investment readiness.

Reporting to the Chief Asset Development Officer, this leader will support simple-cycle and combined-cycle facilities using aeroderivative and large-frame F- and H-class gas turbines; utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS); and powered-land or data center opportunities. The role will work closely with Corporate Environmental and other internal stakeholders while managing external consultants. Detailed studies and permit applications may be outsourced, but the Director retains accountability for development-stage strategy, schedule, budget, risk, quality, agency relationships, and consultant performance. The scope is development and project-specific permitting, not routine operating-fleet compliance, with disciplined transfer of permit conditions and continuing obligations to Project Delivery, Operations, and other accountable compliance owners.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and lead the Environmental Development & Permitting function, including screening standards, permitting playbooks, stage-gate deliverables, consultant governance, regulatory intelligence, document controls, and portfolio reporting.
• Partner with Site Origination, Project Development, and assigned Project Owners to screen greenfield, brownfield, and co-located opportunities; identify environmental fatal flaws; define early diligence and kill criteria; and recommend whether to advance, mitigate, pause, or exit before material spend.
• Develop and maintain a permitting roadmap for each active project, identifying required approvals, agency and public-engagement pathways, study windows, expected permit review periods, application dependencies, risks and mitigations, budget, schedule, critical dates, and contingency plans.
• Coordinate closely with Corporate Environmental, Legal, Project Delivery, Operations, and External Affairs to align development-stage environmental and permitting work with applicable Talen policies, procedures, standards, and environmental management-system requirements. Seek early input and provide advance notice when projects may affect existing permits, compliance programs, operating assets, enterprise positions, or material legal or regulatory risk.
• Lead air-permitting strategy for gas-fired generation and other stationary sources. Direct applicability analyses, emissions estimates, dispersion modeling, control-technology evaluations, and applications involving NSR, PSD, nonattainment NSR, Title V, NSPS, emission credits, NESHAP/MACT, BACT, LAER, greenhouse-gas requirements, and state programs.
• Direct site-specific diligence and field programs, including Phase I and, when warranted, Phase II Environmental Site Assessments; wetlands and waters delineations; threatened and endangered species reviews; cultural and historic-resource evaluations; floodplain and habitat reviews; noise and visual studies; and legacy-liability assessments.
• Lead or coordinate Clean Water Act Sections 401 and 404 approvals, NPDES and stormwater permits, erosion and sediment-control approvals, wastewater and water-supply or withdrawal authorizations, wetlands mitigation, and related environmental permits.
• Establish environmental strategies for BESS and powered-land or data center developments, including emergency or on-site generation, water and wastewater, stormwater, hazardous materials, spill prevention, noise, mitigation, and interfaces with local approvals owned by Site Origination.
• Select, scope, direct, and hold accountable environmental consultants, air modelers, wetland and ecological specialists, cultural-resource firms, laboratories, and environmental counsel. Manage procurement, quality, interfaces, budget, schedule, and acceptance criteria, and challenge unsupported assumptions.
• Serve as the principal development-stage environmental interface with EPA, state agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, State Historic Preservation Offices, Tribal representatives, watershed authorities, and local regulators. Lead consultations, permit negotiations, responses, public notice, and hearings as appropriate.
• Integrate environmental requirements into project configuration, engineering, procurement, contracting, and construction planning. Maintain permit and obligation trackers, incorporate mitigation commitments into project docum