New Leaf Energy is seeking a Project Developer, Midwest to join our growing team! The Project Developer’s ultimate priority is to originate and develop buildable, profitable multi-megawatt renewable energy projects in their assigned region. Your core responsibility will be to begin project development activities on dozens of sites, which means negotiating agreements with landowners, starting the entitlement and interconnection processes, and otherwise moving projects through New Leaf Energy’s project development process until they are ready to finance and build.

You will build and nurture relationships with local stakeholders, including landowners, local governments, utilities, policy-makers, and others. You will work closely with our Policy and Business Development lead for the region, you will be a primary regional expert in the company, and you must either already possess or quickly develop fundamental market knowledge in order to create and execute a successful project development plan.

This position may be filled out of our Chicago, IL office. We value in-person collaboration and offer a hybrid work environment. Hybrid employees work in the office at least two out of every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and are free to work from the office or from home on other days.

Position responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:

• Develop solar and energy storage projects at the megawatt scale, from origination through financial close;
• Meet or exceed annual volume targets. Those volume targets will be the result of a project development plan on which you and your manager will collaborate, but the general expectation is that the company will close multiple projects that you develop, generating at least $5MM of direct profit, each year;
• At the project level, development areas that you will either coordinate among the team or drive directly include: site control, utility interconnection, entitlement/permitting, initial system design, incentive program or other policy program participation, and/or anything else necessary to prepare a project for sale, including support as necessary for our internal engineering and finance teams through the last pre-sale stages of development;
• Gather market intelligence and expand relationships with governments and utilities to deeply understand the development environment, continuously refine that understanding, and use it to adjust strategy;
• Lead/opportunity generation primarily through independent activities including account profiling, cold calls, business networking and other market penetration strategies;
• Generate proposals, quotes, and formal RFP responses;
• Work independently and collaboratively;
• Work with legal, finance, and executive teams to negotiate contract terms and close transactions;
• Consult with clients and construction and finance professionals in developing necessary financial models and assist with tax, financing, and regulatory-related research and negotiations;
• Maintain accurate information about your projects in New Leaf Energy’s systems of record.

Desired Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or other advanced degree preferred;
• Strong knowledge of the solar industry, or a similar and/or adjacent project development context;
• Successful track record in a complex sales or project development environment, preferably in solar and/or energy storage. By “complex sales” we mean large, technical, construction and/or financial products with long sales cycles that require relationship building, lead generation, navigation of complexity, and deal closing;
• Ability to filter through lots of information to figure out what matters, and to prioritize truly promising opportunities from others;
• Demonstrated ability to both lead and follow in cross-functional teams, and to be a great teammate;
• Understanding of key quantitative business concepts, including both probabilistic thinking and financial metrics (NPV, IRR, etc.);
• Ability to spend time in person with customers and travel frequently in assigned territory (20-50% travel);
• A passion for renewable energy, addressing the climate crisis, and accelerating the clean energy transformation.

Compensation

New Leaf Energy compensates all employees in three ways: market-competitive base salary, plus above-market variable compensation, plus an equity-like program such that all employees experience the benefits of ownership. We use a data-driven and transparent methodology to calibrate compensation that is externally competitive and internally equitable, guided by the New Leaf Energy compensation manual, which is available to all employees.

The base salary for this position is $127,000.Total compensation for this position, however, is primarily driven more by our generous project incentive plan, which compensates developers through a profit-sharing mechanism on successfully developed projects. The program is generous and industry-leading, and we’re glad to go into more detail in the interview process.