Senior Manager, Land Development

Fervo Energy Co.; Salt Lake City, Northern (UT, KY); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Fervo Energy is seeking a Senior Manager, Land Development to architect the company’s land portfolio strategy and integrate it into long-range planning. The role partners with internal stakeholders to develop and execute lease development strategies across federal, state, and fee lands and emerging markets.

The person will lead cross-functional land initiatives, build market intelligence, and support negotiation of leases and joint ventures while traveling up to 25%.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; 12+ years in land management, strategy, corporate planning or business development, preferably in energy.
• Experience executing asset acquisition, development, or deployment strategies that support enterprise and long-range planning.
• Proven record presenting executive-level recommendations to C-suite, Boards, investors and others; evaluating acquisitions, divestitures and joint ventures.

Responsibilities

• Leads land strategy and long-range planning to maximize enterprise value.
• Oversees land portfolio strategy and capital allocation; partners with Finance and Operations for prioritizing deployment.

Skills

Executive communication

Stakeholder management

Strategic thinking

Financial acumen

Negotiation

Travel readiness

Education

Bachelor's degree

MBA / MS / JD or equivalent

Tools

GIS

Analytics platforms

Financial modelling

Job description

The Senior Manager, Land Development partners with all internal stakeholders to develop and execute the company’s lease development strategy, ensure the lease portfolio supports the corporate long-range plan, guide land-related investment decisions, and lease portfolio development across federal, state, and fee lands and emerging markets.

Fervo Energy is building the most cost-effective, repeatable geothermal power plants in the world — requiring a durable land and resource portfolio, disciplined long-range planning, and the ability to secure the resources, rights, and agreements needed for growth. As Fervo scales from first-of-a-kind projects to fleet-wide deployment, we’re seeking a Senior Manager — Land Development to architect the company’s land portfolio strategy and its integration into long-range planning. This role reports to the Sr. Director of Land, Environmental and Permitting, working extensively with Sr. Management and Executive components of Fervo.

Description

The role partners with all internal stakeholders to develop and execute the company’s lease development strategy, ensure the lease portfolio supports the corporate long-range plan, guide land-related investment decisions, and lease portfolio development across federal, state, and fee lands and emerging markets. The ideal candidate combines deep asset management expertise with strong analytical and executive-communication skills — synthesizing complex information into clear recommendations while collaborating to build alignment across all Fervo Teams.

Responsibilities

Land Strategy & Long-Range Planning

• Leads land and lease strategy and valuation for the annual long-range plan, setting priorities and evaluating leasing, acquisition, and relinquishment tradeoffs to maximize enterprise value; develops integrated outlooks and presents strategic recommendations.

Land Portfolio Strategy & Capital Allocation

• Leads portfolio optimization and high-grading using economic models and scenario/sensitivity analysis, and partners with Finance and Operations to prioritize capital deployment — bonus payments, rentals, acquisition spend — based on acreage economics, risk, and commercial structure.

Leasing, Acquisitions & Growth Initiatives

• Develops leasing and acquisition strategies across BLM, SITLA, and fee lands, identifies growth positions in domestic geothermal, leads new-market assessments and due diligence on acquisitions and partnerships, and supports negotiation of leases, surface agreements, and joint ventures.
• Builds the company’s land market intelligence capability, monitoring competitor activity and policy developments, benchmarking land position and costs against competitors, and translating insights into strategic recommendations and executive updates.

Executive Communications & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Prepares executive and investor presentations, leads cross-functional land initiatives across Land Administration, Legal, Development, Engineering, Drilling, Operations, Commercial, Finance, and Policy, and drives continuous improvement using GIS, analytics, and AI-enabled tools.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s degree, plus 12+ years of progressive experience in land management, strategy, corporate planning, or business development, preferably in energy.
• Demonstrated experience executing asset acquisition, development, or deployment strategies that support enterprise and long-range planning.
• Proven track record presenting executive-level recommendations to C-suite executives, Boards of Directors, investors, and other stakeholders, with extensive experience evaluating acquisitions, divestitures, and joint ventures.
• Strong financial acumen — acreage valuation, economic modeling, capital allocation — and the ability to synthesize complex information into clear recommendations.
• Exceptional communication, negotiation, and stakeholder-management skills, with experience leading cross-functional teams in highly-matrixed organizations.
• Ability to make high-quality decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments; willing to travel up to 25% of the time.

Preferred

• Advanced degree in Business, Engineering, Economics, or a related discipline (MBA, MS, JD, or equivalent).
• Direct experience in geothermal, power generation, upstream energy, renewables, or capital-intensive infrastructure, including geothermal-specific considerations (resource rights, unitization, Geothermal Steam Act).
• Prior experience in high-growth environments, building processes while scaling organizations.
• Demonstrated success building market intelligence or analytics capabilities, leveraging modelling and/or automated tools or processes to improve strategic decision-making.
• 10+ years of experience at a senior management level with a publicly traded energy company; demonstrated success in developing growth strategies based on market intelligence for a portfolio of projects; experience presenting progress updates and strategic plans to executive leadership.

Location

Fervo Energy has corporate offices in Houston, TX, Golden, CO, Reno, NV , Oakland, CA and Salt Lake City, UT. This position is preferred to be based out of our Salt Lake City, UT office, with a hybrid work model.

Fervo Energy commercializes technology to own, develop, and operate geothermal assets as the dispatchable foundation to a 100% clean energy future. As a 24/7, reliable clean energy resource, geothermal energy has a major role to play in the future electric grid and Fervo Energy’s key innovations bring a full suite of modern technology to make geothermal cost competitive. Fervo’s innovations include technologies such as advanced computational models, horizontal drilling, and distributed fiber optic sensing that we have developed with partners including Schlumberger, ARPA‑E, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Fervo is supported through Cyclotron Road, the Department of Energy, Stanford University, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Fervo Energy is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, gender, religion, marital status, registered domestic partner status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, sex, genetic information, sexual orientation, military and veteran status or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. It also prohibits unlawful discrimination based on the perception that anyone has any of those characteristics or is associated with a person who has or is perceived as having any of those characteristics.