Sr. Manager, Development

ABOUT AVANTUS

Avantus develops, owns, and operates utility-scale clean energy projects across California and the Desert Southwest. Our development pipeline represents one of the nation's largest portfolios of solar with integrated storage, capable of providing dispatchable power to 17 million Americans, day and night. With over a decade of industry leadership and strategic investment from KKR and EIG, Avantus delivers affordable, reliable clean energy solutions that meet America’s growing energy demand.

ABOUT THE POSITION

We are seeking a highly motivated and organized candidate for a Manager or Sr. Manager, Development position for the WECC market, (including CAISO). The successful candidate will demonstrate sound industry knowledge, superior communications, and detail-oriented organizational skills.

The position will be responsible for the development of solar photovoltaic and energy storage projects through leadership, project management, negotiation, and transaction support across a pipeline of projects targeting wholesale power markets.

The successful candidate will have at least 5 years of experience in the energy industry, specifically in energy infrastructure development in WECC (including CAISO) markets; strong financial analysis skills; an ability to effectively communicate complex ideas; and the ability and enthusiasm to resolve complicated challenges and drive projects forward.  The candidate must demonstrate sound industry and project development knowledge, superior leadership, negotiation, and communication skills, the ability to focus on minute details while still seeing the big picture, detailed organization, a desire to solve complex problems, initiative, results oriented and an excellent ability to work with others across multiple teams. 

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Manage development activities including but not limited to site acquisition, title curative, interconnection, regulatory approvals, engineering, land use and environmental permitting, and financial valuation by working with internal teams and external consultants.
• Collaboration and coordination with functional team members, consultants, attorneys, advisers, transmission providers, off-takers, financing counterparties, and other project stakeholders.
• Identification of project risks, coordinating resolution and mitigation with cross-functional team.
• Command of project budgets and project schedules
• Travel to site locations and meet with project stakeholders and evaluate sites.
• Engagement in community, local, and state institutions for project support.
• Support land use and environmental permitting applications as well as preliminary engineering.
• Coordinate the real estate title curative process including diligence, supporting negotiation, and closeout with support of internal real estate team and external consultants.
• Support the interconnection process including diligence, technical review, negotiation from application through signed agreement, with support of internal interconnection team.
• Coordinate preliminary project valuation modeling with the project finance team.
• Negotiate various project agreements including tax abatements and mitigation settlements.
• Arranging, organizing, regularly scheduled project meetings, communicating projects’ statuses, reviewing and updating the project schedule and cash forecast.
• Review and manage project contracts including leases, interconnection agreements, power purchase agreements to ensure compliance with their terms.
• Support prospecting efforts for new project land and interconnection positions.
• Support marketing efforts. Including the development of key pricing assumptions and preparation of customer proposals.

REQUIRED SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS

• Strong market experience in CAISO, and/or the Southwestern US.
• Knowledge of utility-scale solar and energy storage markets.
• Extensive knowledge of the full-cycle of utility-scale renewable power development and marketing.
• Knowledge of interconnection, permitting, real estate, state/federal regulation, utility procurement goals, politics, law and other issues that impact development of renewable energy projects in energy markets.
• Detailed understanding of the interconnection process (study process, contracting, utility requirements, financial obligations, and scope execution by utilities) to both site projects optimally and to advance them through COD.
• Solid understanding of economic drivers within our business.
• Ability to concisely frame issues for senior executives and other team members by providing context, analysis, recommendations, and risk/benefit tradeoffs, both in written and verbal format.
• Capable of controlling and influencing the costs, terms, and schedules of key project milestones that are heavily dependent on external counterparties, often without strong commercial recourse.
• Strong understanding of the relationships and dependencies between tasks in a project schedule to prioritize teams’ resource allocation.
• Highly resourceful and able to advance project development, while navigating through complex challenges and mitigating key risks.
• Highly proficient in MS Excel (advanced proficiency required), Project, Word, and PowerPoint, as well as Google Earth
• Independent self-starter who can meet deadlines and deliver quality products with minimal oversight.
• Substantial ability to recognize opportunities, identify and evaluate risks in a development context as well as effectively communicate the foregoing.
• Ability to manage a large workload, often providing support to processes managed by colleagues, while prioritizing tasks and effectively juggling competing deadlines.
• Detail-oriented with a strong sense of personal responsibility and ownership of work product.
• Excellent organizational and communications skills.
• Renewable energy development experience in CAISO and other markets, real estate, permitting, engineering, finance, or utility experience is a plus.
• At least 5-10 years of experience in the energy industry
• Minimum four-year bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline, MBA preferred.

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