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, envir…