Executive/Founder in Residence - Advanced Energy

Job description

**About Roadrunner Venture Studios** Roadrunner Venture Studios is the nation’s leading platform for founding breakthrough ventures in deep technology. Our mission is to turn frontier tech into breakthrough companies for the benefit of the American people. Together with engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs, we build products, create business models, recruit teams, align companies with their first customers, and provide initial funding. Our Venture Studio focuses on advanced energy, advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, and next generation compute. ## **About the Role** Roadrunner Venture Studios is seeking an Executive/Founder in Residence (EIR/FIR), Advanced Energy to help identify, shape, and launch new companies at the intersection of energy infrastructure, power generation, and rapidly growing electricity demand. This role is designed for an experienced energy executive who understands not only how power is generated, but how energy projects are financed, contracted, sold, and ultimately turned into bankable businesses. The EIR/FIR will work alongside the Roadrunner team and prospective founders to evaluate new venture opportunities, develop commercial and financing strategies, and help move the strongest concepts from thesis to execution. A particular focus will be opportunities created by hyperscalers, data centers, advanced manufacturing, and other large-load customers whose demand for reliable power is reshaping energy markets. ## **What You'll Do** - Develop New Energy Ventures: Identify and evaluate opportunities across power generation, energy infrastructure, grid services, and large-load energy markets. - Lead Project Finance Strategy: Build and evaluate financing structures for capital-intensive energy projects, including project-level debt and equity, tax incentives, development capital, and other sources of infrastructure financing. - Structure Power Offtake: Develop commercial models for selling power through Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), utility contracts, direct-to-customer agreements, and wholesale electricity markets. - Engage Hyperscalers & Large Energy Buyers: Build relationships with hyperscalers, data center operators, industrial customers, utilities, and other major power purchasers and understand how they evaluate generation, reliability, price, location, and time-to-power. - Build Bankable Projects: Translate technologies and development concepts into projects capable of attracting customers, investors, lenders, and strategic partners. - Understand the Economics of Power: Develop and pressure-test revenue models based on the economics of generating and selling electricity, including contracted and merchant power, capacity, ancillary services, and other potential revenue streams. - Navigate Grid & Market Dynamics: Evaluate interconnection, transmission, congestion, curtailment, market pricing, and other factors that determine whether and how a project can economically sell power to the grid. - Shape Commercial Strategy: Determine where a venture should sit in the value chain—from technology provider to developer, owner/operator, or independent power producer—and how it should ultimately make money. - Build the Ecosystem: Develop relationships with utilities, developers, IPPs, infrastructure investors, lenders, hyperscalers, equipment providers, regulators, and other partners necessary to launch and scale new ventures. - Support Company Formation: Work directly with Roadrunner and founding teams on business models, financial models, customer development, capital strategy, partnerships, and early company formation. ## **What We're Looking For** - Significant experience in energy project development, project finance, infrastructure investing, power markets, or commercial energy strategy. - Direct experience developing, financing, owning, operating, or transacting around power generation or energy infrastructure projects. - Deep understanding of PPAs and other power offtake structures, including the commercial terms that make projects financeable. - Experience working with utilities, grid operators, independent power producers, infrastructure investors, or large corporate energy buyers. - Familiarity with the rapidly evolving power requirements of hyperscalers and data centers is strongly preferred. - Strong understanding of project economics, including development costs, capex, operating costs, financing, power pricing, returns, and risk allocation. - Ability to assess both contracted and merchant power opportunities and understand how electricity is monetized across different markets. - Commercial instincts and the ability to distinguish an interesting technology from a financeable, buildable, and scalable energy business. - Comfort operating in an entrepreneurial environment where the opportunity, business model, team, and path to market may still be taking shape. ## **The Ideal Profile** The ideal candidate has spent their career close to the point where energy projects become economic reality. They understand what it takes to develop a project, secure an offtaker, negotiate a PPA, finance construction, connect to the grid, and ultimately sell power. They may come from an independent power producer, energy developer, infrastructure investor, utility, project finance institution, hyperscaler energy team, or large-scale energy infrastructure company. Most importantly, they combine sophisticated project finance and power-market knowledge with a builder's mentality and want to use that experience to create the next generation of advanced energy companies.