Site Selection Lead

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenAI is seeking a Site Selection Lead to define and execute the site-selection strategy for powered-land opportunities. You will collaborate with cross-functional partners to determine what makes a site attractive, executable, and scalable, turning this rubric into portfolio choices and deployment plans.

You will convene teams across commercial, legal, finance, power, and development to shape terms, funding assumptions, and the path to deployment before deeper commitment.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in site selection, infrastructure development, data center development, energy development, or related field.
• Strong strategic judgment on market intelligence, portfolio construction, site viability, counterparty credibility, and prioritization.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional organizations through ambiguous decisions and align technical, commercial, legal, and finance stakeholders.
• Commercial and financial fluency sufficient to connect site quality, deal terms, capital implications, schedule, and deployment risk.
• Experience building site funnels, screening frameworks, mapping or test-fit workflows, dashboards, and executive decision materials.

Responsibilities

• Own the site-selection strategy across priority geographies, including market maps, pipeline segmentation, source refreshes, live-location tracking, and portfolio prioritization.
• Convene cross-functional partners to define the shared rubric for a high-quality site.
• Translate rubric into clear screening criteria across power readiness, land control, timing, scale, cost, and environmental factors.
• Orchestrate teams to shape exclusivity, initial terms, site-control strategy, funding assumptions, and deployment path.
• Build a deployment plan for top candidates identifying capacity, sequencing, and risks.
• Lead conceptual site planning and test-fit screening with maps, buildings, substations, roads, parking, and load.
• Maintain a single decision-support view of pipeline stage, site health, and approvals.
• Present exec-ready recommendations with trade-offs and next steps; hand over to Development Lead.

Skills

Site selection strategy

Cross-functional leadership

Market intelligence

Strategic prioritization

Deal terms & capital implications

Tools

Dashboards

Mapping workflows

Job description

About the Team

OpenAI is building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Site Readiness & Development team owns the upstream diligence and development work required to convert powered-land opportunities into executable infrastructure options.

About the Role

The Site Selection Lead sets the site-selection strategy for powered-land and greenfield/brownfield opportunities. This role defines, with cross-functional partners, what makes a site attractive, executable, and scalable, then turns that shared rubric into portfolio choices and deployment plans.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the site-selection strategy across priority geographies, including market maps, pipeline segmentation, source refreshes, live-location tracking, and portfolio prioritization.

• Convene Power, Land, Development, Engineering, Construction, Environmental, Community, Commercial, Legal, and Finance partners to define the shared rubric for a high-quality site.

• Translate that rubric into clear screening criteria across power readiness, land control, timing, scale, cost, community risk, environmental constraints, AHJ path, budget, schedule, and counterparty credibility.

• Orchestrate Commercial, Legal, Finance, Power, and Development teams to shape exclusivity, initial terms, site-control strategy, funding assumptions, and the path to deployment before deeper commitment.

• Build a deployment plan for top candidates that identifies capacity, sequencing, capital implications, critical-path approvals, risks, owners, and stage-gate decisions.

• Lead conceptual site planning and test-fit screening using boundaries, map layers, buildings, substations, roads, parking, laydown, stormwater, utility corridors, acreage, and estimated load.

• Maintain a single decision-support view of pipeline stage, site health, power readiness, finance review, maps, project evidence, outstanding source data, owners, deadlines, and escalations.

• Present executive-ready advance, defer, or stop recommendations with clear trade-offs, resource asks, and next steps; hand qualified sites to the Development Lead with a complete screening record.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in site selection, infrastructure development, data center development, energy development, commercial real estate, or a related field.

• Strong strategic judgment on market intelligence, portfolio construction, site viability, counterparty credibility, and prioritization.

• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional organizations through ambiguous decisions and align technical, commercial, legal, and finance stakeholders.

• Commercial and financial fluency sufficient to connect site quality, deal terms, capital implications, schedule, and deployment risk.

• Experience building site funnels, screening frameworks, mapping or test-fit workflows, dashboards, and executive decision materials.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

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