Senior Manager, Commercial Contracts

Position Description

The Senior Manager, Commercial Contracts will provide end-to-end commercial leadership for major equipment supply agreements and other strategic project contracts on a "cradle to grave" basis. This role will work across Legal, Supply Chain, Engineering, Project Management, Construction, Commissioning, Operations, and Finance. The Senior Manager will support contract negotiations and remain accountable after execution for contract administration, change orders, claims, supplier recoveries, warranties, and closeout. This position will report to the Senior Counsel, with a dotted-line relationship to Procurement leadership.

This role acts as a liaison between Legal, Supply Chain, and Engineering. Legal owns drafting, Procurement owns sourcing strategy and supplier selection, and Engineering owns technical scope and acceptance. This position provides the commercial continuity, contract discipline, and portfolio visibility needed to convert those decisions into executable agreements and enforce them through performance. The role will also improve Fervo's contract-management processes from the ground up, using contract lifecycle management (CLM) systems and practical AI-enabled workflows to increase speed, visibility, and accountability.

Responsibilities

• Sourcing Events: Partner with Procurement and Engineering to plan and execute sourcing events for assigned major equipment and construction contracts, including commercial RFP content, contractual exceptions, bid evaluation, and award recommendations.

• Negotiations: Lead day-to-day negotiations of equipment supply agreements, purchase terms, framework agreements, services agreements, amendments, and related commercial instruments under Legal's direction. Negotiate pricing and payment mechanics, delivery commitments, performance obligations, liquidated damages, warranties, security, changes, acceptance, remedies, termination, and closeout requirements.

• Contract Management Planning: Establish and maintain a contract-management plan for each assigned agreement, including obligations, milestones, deliverables, notices, change orders, payment conditions, liquidated damages, securities, acceptance requirements, and warranty periods.

• Supplier Contact and Record Keeping: Serve as the principal commercial contracts contact for assigned suppliers after award, and maintain the definitive record of notices, decisions, changes, claims, backcharges, and unresolved obligations.

• Change Control: Administer change control, evaluate supplier requests with Engineering, Project Controls, and Procurement, and negotiate approved change orders and commercial settlements within delegated authority.

• Warranty and Supplier Recoveries: Lead the commercial management of warranty claims and supplier recoveries, including repair, replacement, reperformance, field service, expedited logistics, and recoverable costs.

• Supplier Performance: Establish supplier performance measures and KPIs, lead periodic commercial reviews, and provide early warning of material cost, schedule, performance, and contractual risks.

• Formal Correspondence and Disputes: Coordinate amendments, cure notices, reservations of rights, and other formal correspondence with Legal, and support material disputes with an organized factual and contractual record.

• Portfolio Reporting: Maintain concise portfolio reporting on negotiations, obligations, changes, claims, warranties, supplier exposure, deadlines, and required management decisions.

• Closeout and Lessons Learned: Conduct after-action reviews following each agreement's closeout, and provide feedback to the Legal, Procurement, and Engineering teams to improve future contracting and sourcing decisions.

• Scalable Procedures: Develop scalable contract-management procedures, templates, playbooks, registers, and training, and incorporate execution lessons into future contracts and procurement decisions.

• CLM Process Ownership: Assess current contracting and post-execution processes from first principles, and serve as the business process owner for CLM workflows covering intake, negotiation, approvals, obligations, notices, changes, warranties, claims, and closeout.

• AI-Enabled Workflows: Apply AI to defined contract-management use cases such as clause and obligation extraction, contract summaries, notice preparation, issue tracking, and reporting, with appropriate validation, human review, confidentiality, security, and access controls.

• Data-Driven Improvement: Use contract data and baseline measures to improve cycle time, notice compliance, change-order aging, warranty recovery, data quality, and user adoption.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, construction management, supply chain, business, finance, law, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience

• 10+ years of progressive experience in commercial contract management, project procurement, equipment contracting, claims, or related project-execution roles

• Demonstrated experience negotiating and administering high-value equipment supply, EPC, construction, services, or other complex industrial agreements

• Substantial post-award experience managing changes, claims, notices, warranties, supplier performance, and contract closeout

• Strong working knowledge of payment milestones, schedule remedies, performance obligations, warranties, acceptance, changes, liability allocation, insurance, security, and termination rights

• Ability to drive decisions across functions without direct authority and communicate complex commercial issues in concise, decision-ready terms

• Hands-on experience improving contract work with AI, CLM, or comparable workflow tools, including workflow design, testing, data structuring, reporting, or implementation ownership

• Ability to evaluate AI outputs against source documents and apply appropriate controls for accuracy, confidentiality, security, and human accountability

• Willingness to travel to project sites, supplier facilities, factory acceptance tests, and commercial meetings as needed

Preferred

• Owner or developer-side experience combined with experience at an EPC contractor, OEM, or complex industrial supplier

• Experience in power generation, renewable energy, data-center power, or other major industrial infrastructure

• Experience with turbines or ORC systems, heat exchangers, pumps, process skids, transformers, switchgear, control systems, or comparable long-lead equipment

• Experience with fast-track, first-of-a-kind, or design-evolving projects

• Experience as a process owner, product owner, administrator, or implementation lead for a CLM platform, AI-enabled contracting solution, or related reporting system, with measurable improvement in a contract-management outcome

Who Thrives at Fervo

We screen for attributes as much as experience. The people who do best here share a few things in common:

• First-principles thinkers who question inherited processes and trace problems to their source

• An extreme ownership mindset and willingness to remain accountable through final resolution

• A bias for speed, iteration, and practical implementation

• Simplifiers who reduce complexity without losing necessary commercial discipline

• Collaborators who can align Legal, Procurement, Engineering, and project teams

• A commitment to Fervo's mission and to building systems that scale

Location

Fervo Energy is headquartered in Houston, TX. This is a hybrid role based in Houston, with regular in-office collaboration and periodic travel to project sites and supplier facilities.