Real Estate Lead, Data Center Site Acquisition

Job description

About the Team OpenAI, in close collaboration with our capital partners, is embarking on a journey to build the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure ecosystem. The Industrial Compute team is central to this mission, setting the core infra strategy and implementing this vision. From site selection to the buildout process, this team sits at the intersection of commercial, technical, strategy, and operations, interacting with teams and executives inside and outside of OpenAI. About the Role OpenAI is seeking a Real Estate Lead to own land acquisition strategy and site-control execution for our next-generation data center portfolio across the U.S. This role sits at the front end of infrastructure delivery, translating market intelligence, broker/developer relationships, and commercial judgment into credible shovel-ready positions that meet OpenAI’s power, land, permitting, and expansion requirements. The Real Estate Lead will not operate as a traditional transactional real estate function. The scope is to help shape where OpenAI can build, secure the right land positions early, structure defensible commercial terms, and coordinate the legal, technical, and development work required to move opportunities from sourced lead to controlled site and ultimately to readiness handoff. This is an individual contributor lead role and does not have direct reports initially. The role also owns market prioritization and portfolio-level acquisition strategy across target geographies, and is expected to run multiple negotiations in parallel while translating site-control work into executive-ready acquisition recommendations. Key Responsibilities - Own market prioritization and portfolio acquisition strategy across target geographies, including scenario analysis for speed, scale, expansion potential, and risk-adjusted economics. - Proactively source and evaluate land parcels at scale to support long-term data center growth across priority markets. - Build and manage a national pipeline of site opportunities using broker/developer relationships, land-owner outreach, utility intelligence, and market mapping. - Lead commercial site-control strategy and run multiple negotiations in parallel across LOIs, option agreements, PSA structures, BTS, lease, or related site-control pathways as strategy requires. - Coordinate cross-functional diligence across zoning, entitlements, title/ALTA, environmental, power/water infrastructure, site access, offsite improvements, and easement needs. - Partner closely with Utilities, Land Development, Environmental, Economic Development, and Community Affairs leads to ensure acquisition strategy is grounded in real development readiness. - Negotiate transaction structures that preserve OpenAI flexibility while managing execution risk, schedule exposure, and downstream development constraints. - Prepare transaction approval packages, financial analyses, and executive summaries that translate site-control decisions into investment recommendations. - Build repeatable playbooks, templates, and decision criteria for faster site screening, closing, and portfolio management. - Establish durable external relationships with brokers, spec developers, land owners, consultants, and local market participants. - Monitor national and regional land markets, pricing shifts, policy changes, and community dynamics that could affect acquisition risk or strategic fit. Qualifications - 8+ years in commercial real estate acquisition, site selection, or corporate development—ideally with data center or hyperscaler firms. - Proven success identifying and closing large-scale land deals (typically 500+ acres) under tight timelines. - Deep understanding of data center site selection drivers: power availability, grid interconnectivity, fiber, zoning, entitlement, environmental constraints. - Demonstrated ability to manage complex due diligence scopes: surveys, title, environmental, zoning overlays, access rights. - Strong negotiation skills and familiarity with LOIs, PSA terms, option agreements, and closing mechanics. - Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; comfortable presenting complex portfolios to executives. - Strategic, data-driven thinker with ability to translate market intelligence into acquisition strategy. - Travel readiness to prospect and close on-site acquisition deals. 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. For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf. Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations. To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant, please submit a report through this form https://form.asana.com/?d=57018692298241&k=5MqR40fZd7jlxVUh5J-UeA. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made via this link https://form.asana.com/?k=bQ7w9h3iexRlicUdWRiwvg&d=57018692298241. OpenAI Global Applicant Privacy Policy https://cdn.openai.com/policies/global-employee-and-contractor-privacy-policy.pdf At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.