VP/Principal, Data Center Site Development (United States)

Macdonald & Company is pleased to partner with a well-capitalized real estate investment firm to appoint a Vice President or Principal to build and lead a new data center powered land strategy.

This is an entrepreneurial opportunity to establish a new investment and development platform focused on identifying, securing, and de-risking land for future data center development.

The successful candidate will lead the strategy nationally, identifying markets where significant power can be secured, controlling suitable land, navigating the utility and power approval process, and creating de-risked powered land opportunities that can ultimately be monetized through sales to data center developers and operators.

This is not a vertical construction role. The focus is on the early-stage intersection of power, land, and data center development, with the opportunity to build a dedicated platform and participate meaningfully in the value created.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the sourcing and evaluation of powered land and early-stage data center development opportunities across the United States.
• Identify markets and sites where significant power capacity can be secured to support future data center development.
• Build and maintain relationships with utilities, landowners, brokers, developers, consultants, and other industry participants.
• Negotiate land acquisitions, options, and other structures to secure site control while projects progress through the power and approval process.
• Lead utility engagement, including power availability, capacity, timing, infrastructure requirements, and the process required to secure service for individual sites.
• Evaluate the capital requirements, risks, and potential returns associated with prospective powered land opportunities.
• Coordinate early-stage due diligence, entitlements, engineering, and other development activities required to de-risk sites.
• Develop strategies to monetize approved and de-risked sites through sales to data center developers, operators, and other end users.
• Present new investment opportunities and recommendations to senior leadership and participate in capital allocation decisions.
• Establish the processes, relationships, and market intelligence required to build the strategy into a dedicated business line over time.

The Opportunity

This role offers the chance to build a data center powered land strategy from the ground up, backed by an established real estate investment platform with capital available to deploy.

Rather than joining an existing data center development team, the successful candidate will have significant autonomy to shape the strategy, originate opportunities nationally, and determine where and how the firm invests.

The firm is particularly interested in candidates with direct experience across data center site selection, powered land, site acquisition, utility engagement, or early-stage development.

The role can be based remotely within the United States and is expected to include meaningful back-end participation in the value created alongside competitive cash compensation.