Senior Vice President of Development - Data Centers

Irving Knight Group; United States; On-site; USD 350,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

Irving Knight Group is seeking a Senior Vice President of Development to lead the development strategy and execution for hyperscale, colocation, and other mission-critical data center projects across the United States.

Reporting to the Chief Development Officer, you will oversee the full development lifecycle—from market selection and site identification to land control, power strategy, permitting, and transition to construction and operations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in real estate, business, engineering, finance, or a related discipline.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute the company’s U.S. data center development strategy in alignment with corporate growth objectives.
• Identify and prioritize target markets based on power availability, fiber connectivity, land, customer demand, tax considerations, labor availability, regulatory environment, and overall development feasibility.
• Lead the development of new data center campuses and individual facilities from initial concept through construction commencement.
• Establish development plans, milestones, budgets, risk registers, and governance processes for multiple concurrent projects.
• Provide regular updates to the Chief Development Officer, executive leadership team, investment committees, and other stakeholders.
• Build and lead high-performing development teams, including internal staff, consultants, brokers, attorneys, engineers, and other external partners.
• Establish consistent development standards, reporting frameworks, approval processes, and best practices across the portfolio.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Stakeholder management

Project management

Negotiation

Financial acumen

Education

Bachelor’s degree in real estate, business, engineering, finance, or related field

Advanced degree preferred

Tools

GIS software

Excel

Financial modeling

Job description

The Senior Vice President of Development will lead the development strategy and execution of a portfolio of hyperscale, colocation, and other mission-critical data center projects across the United States.

Reporting to the Chief Development Officer, this senior leadership position will oversee the full development lifecycle—from market selection, site identification, land control, power and utility strategy, and permitting through to approvals, infrastructure delivery, and transition to construction and operations.

The successful candidate will bring significant experience in large-scale real estate development, infrastructure, energy, data centers, or other mission-critical environments. They will be a commercially minded leader with a strong understanding of power procurement, utility relationships, entitlement processes, community engagement, and the complexities of delivering data center campuses in a competitive and rapidly evolving market.

This position requires approximately 50% travel to project sites, offices, partner locations, utility meetings, government agencies, and other key stakeholder engagements.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and execute the company’s U.S. data center development strategy in alignment with corporate growth objectives.
• Identify and prioritize target markets based on power availability, fiber connectivity, land, customer demand, tax considerations, labor availability, regulatory environment, and overall development feasibility.
• Lead the development of new data center campuses and individual facilities from initial concept through construction commencement.
• Establish development plans, milestones, budgets, risk registers, and governance processes for multiple concurrent projects.
• Provide regular updates to the Chief Development Officer, executive leadership team, investment committees, and other stakeholders.
• Build and lead high-performing development teams, including internal staff, consultants, brokers, attorneys, engineers, and other external partners.
• Establish consistent development standards, reporting frameworks, approval processes, and best practices across the portfolio.

Site Acquisition and Market Development

• Lead the sourcing, evaluation, underwriting, and control of potential data center development sites.
• Oversee negotiations for land purchases, ground leases, options, easements, rights-of-way, and other real estate agreements.
• Evaluate site constraints, including zoning, environmental conditions, topography, floodplain, geotechnical matters, transportation access, water availability, and community considerations.
• Develop market-entry strategies for new regions and maintain strong knowledge of relevant U.S. data center markets.
• Partner with internal investment, legal, finance, and engineering teams to assess project viability and investment risk.
• Manage relationships with landowners, brokers, economic development organizations, local communities, and public-sector stakeholders.

Power, Utilities, and Infrastructure

• Lead the strategy for securing reliable, scalable, and cost-effective power capacity for current and future data center campuses.
• Develop and maintain relationships with utilities, independent system operators, transmission organizations, power providers, renewable energy companies, and other energy stakeholders.
• Negotiate and manage utility service agreements, interconnection arrangements, transmission-related matters, power purchase agreements, and other energy-related contracts, as applicable.
• Assess grid capacity, delivery timelines, redundancy, substation requirements, transmission constraints, and energy-market risks.
• Coordinate the planning and delivery of off-site and on-site infrastructure, including substations, transmission, roads, water, wastewater, fiber, and other utility systems.
• Identify opportunities for renewable energy, battery storage, distributed generation, and other energy solutions that support the company’s sustainability and resiliency objectives.

Entitlements, Permitting, and Community Engagement

• Direct zoning, entitlement, permitting, environmental review, and development approval strategies for complex data center projects.
• Oversee engagement with municipal, county, state, and federal agencies.
• Manage public hearings, planning commission processes, zoning approvals, development agreements, incentive negotiations, and other governmental approvals.
• Build constructive relationships with elected officials, regulators, agencies, local communities, and economic development groups.
• Lead community engagement strategies and ensure projects are positioned as responsible, sustainable, and economically beneficial developments.
• Identify and resolve regulatory, political, environmental, and stakeholder risks that could affect project schedules or feasibility.

Project Financial and Commercial Oversight

• Work with finance and investment teams to develop project budgets, financial models, investment memoranda, return analyses, and approval packages.
• Oversee development budgets, consultant costs, acquisition expenses, infrastructure commitments, and project contingencies.
• Monitor project economics and recommend changes to scope, phasing, schedule, or strategy when necessary.
• Support negotiations with customers, joint venture partners, investors, lenders, utilities, contractors, and other commercial counterparties.
• Evaluate and structure strategic partnerships, joint ventures, incentives, and other commercial arrangements.
• Maintain clear visibility into project risks, assumptions, dependencies, and expected returns.

Design, Construction, and Delivery Coordination

• Coordinate with design, engineering, construction, procurement, operations, and leasing teams to ensure development plans support technical and commercial requirements.
• Ensure site planning and development decisions align with data center resiliency, security, efficiency, sustainability, and scalability objectives.
• Oversee the transition of projects from development into design and construction.
• Collaborate with construction leadership to ensure that entitlement, utility, infrastructure, and site-development requirements are delivered in accordance with project schedules.
• Support the resolution of development-related issues throughout design and construction.

Leadership and Stakeholder Management

• Serve as a senior representative of the company with customers, investors, utilities, government agencies, local communities, consultants, and business partners.
• Build strong relationships across internal functions, including development, construction, engineering, finance, legal, procurement, operations, energy, sales, and sustainability.
• Create a culture of accountability, urgency, collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement.
• Coach, mentor, and develop development professionals and regional leaders.
• Represent the company at industry events, conferences, public meetings, and relevant market forums.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in real estate, business, engineering, construction management, urban planning, finance, or a related discipline.
• Advanced degree or professional qualification is preferred but not required.
• Significant senior-level experience leading the development of large-scale data centers, mission-critical facilities, industrial infrastructure, energy projects, or similarly complex developments.
• Demonstrated experience delivering projects through site selection, land acquisition, utility strategy, entitlements, permitting, infrastructure coordination, and construction commencement.
• Strong knowledge of the U.S. data center development landscape and the factors influencing site and market selection.
• Proven experience working with utilities and securing power for large-scale developments.
• Experience negotiating land acquisitions, leases, development agreements, utility arrangements, incentives, and strategic partnerships.
• Strong understanding of zoning, entitlement, environmental, permitting, and public-sector approval processes.
• Demonstrated commercial and financial acumen, including experience with development budgets, underwriting, project economics, and investment approvals.
• Experience managing multiple projects and geographically dispersed teams.
• Proven ability to lead through ambiguity, manage competing priorities, and make sound decisions in a fast-moving environment.
• Strong executive presence and exceptional communication, negotiation, presentation, and relationship-management skills.
• Willingness and ability to travel approximately 50% across the United States.

Preferred Experience

• Experience managing developments requiring significant power capacity and complex utility infrastructure.
• Experience with data center customer requirements, phased campus planning, and pre-leasing or customer-driven development.
• Experience with public-private partnerships, tax incentives, economic development agreements, or community benefit programs.
• Knowledge of energy markets, renewable power, battery storage, distributed generation, and sustainability strategies.
• Experience leading development teams through periods of rapid organizational and portfolio growth.