Site Selection - Data Centers

Futura Search Partners; New York (NY); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Futura Search Partners is recruiting for a senior site procurement role focused on developing US data center capacity. You will source powered land, evaluate viability, and negotiate leases to move sites from diligence to live power efficiently.

You will lead due diligence, permitting interpretation and stakeholder coordination, traveling as projects require to secure strategic sites and optimize build timelines.

Qualifications

• Real estate experience focused on data centers or large industrial projects.
• Ability to assess land viability quickly: power, buildability and permitting.
• Customer-centric mindset with strong ownership and problem-solving.
• Ability to align stakeholders across diverse internal and external teams; willing to travel 20%+.

Responsibilities

• Lead the site procurement strategy for the US data center portfolio, sourcing and evaluating powered land and negotiating leases.
• Run site due diligence: evaluate utility and behind-the-meter power at 200MW+ scale; assess buildability via title, surveys, geotechnical and environmental studies.
• Understand permitting requirements at each site and their impact on construction schedules.
• Maintain relationships with brokers, landowners and developers; conduct vendor due diligence and on-site audits with engineers.
• Collaborate with DC Design to ensure sites meet technical requirements; own capacity planning and forecasting across clients/regions.
• Partner with Finance on multi-year infrastructure investment and lead commercial negotiations with landowners and developers.

Skills

Real estate experience

Data center experience

Land viability assessment

Stakeholder alignment

Travel 20%+

Job description

Futura Search Partners is working on this search with a company building AI compute infrastructure at a pace and scale the industry has not operated at. By 2030 the business needs to bring on multiple gigawatts of new capacity every week, which means securing sites faster than anyone currently does.

The problems this team is solving

• Get power online in months, not years. Most of the clock runs before the lease is ever signed. You'll optimise the pre-signature work — site diligence, permitting and development — so a site goes from signed lease to live power in under six months.
• Acquire tens of GWs behind the meter. Reaching that scale means generating on-site rather than waiting on grid interconnection. You'll secure the land and the behind-the-meter generation to get there.

What you'll do

• Lead the site procurement strategy for the US data center portfolio, sourcing and evaluating powered land for large-scale development and negotiating leases with data center operators.
• Run site due diligence: evaluate utility and behind-the-meter power at 200MW+ scale, and assess buildability through title documents, surveys, geotechnical reports and environmental studies.
• Understand permitting requirements at each site and what they mean for the construction schedule.
• Maintain relationships with brokers, landowners and developers so a valid site is never missed, and run vendor due diligence including on-site audits with specialist engineers.
• Work directly with DC Design to keep sites matched to the latest technical requirements, and own capacity planning and forecasting across clients and regions.
• Partner with Finance on multi-year infrastructure investment and cost structures, and lead commercial negotiations with landowners and developers.

What we're looking for

• Real estate experience focused on data centers or other large industrial projects, with large, complex deals closed.
• You assess land viability fast and rigorously: power, buildability and permitting.
• A customer-centric mindset, strong ownership and proactive problem-solving.
• You align stakeholders across diverse internal and external teams, and you'll travel 20%+ as projects require.

Nice to have

• Behind-the-meter power evaluation.
• Utility interconnection familiarity.

How they operate

High ownership and full autonomy — people here own things end to end and take on scope outside their core role without being asked. Everything moves as fast as it can. Assumptions get challenged from first principles, with no egos and the best idea winning. Long hours at high intensity, because the frontier of AI is the most interesting problem of our time.