Development Analyst

Cultivate Power Career Opportunity: Development Analyst 

Location: Chicago, Illinois  

The Role: 

Cultivate Power is seeking a highly motivated candidate for a Development Analyst position. This position would support project and market development activities, providing hands-on learning opportunities with great potential for growth. Projects will be located across Illinois and will generally have between 1-3-year development cycles.  

An excellent candidate will demonstrate comprehensive attention to detail, superior organization, enthusiastic initiative, and passion for a mission-driven start-up environment.  

This position is for you if you are motivated to make the world a better place by developing high-impact renewable energy assets and want to learn by doing.  

This role will be based out of our Chicago headquarters and be in the office 2-3 days per week.  

About us:  

Cultivate Power is a distributed solar and storage platform. We develop distributed energy resources that advance productive use of the land and integrate with the community and grid. We believe community generation improves grid resiliency, furthers energy independence, and brings economic benefits to local communities. Our top focus is cultivating land into distributed renewable energy projects. 

Our team has a combined 100 years of experience developing and financing solar, wind, battery storage, and transmission projects, as well as policy and market development across more than 25 states. Before launching Cultivate Power, our team members were central to the growth of a multi-billion dollar solar and storage business, with 11GW of commercialized assets inclusive of an operating fleet of 1.7GW. The Cultivate Power team’s skillset spans project development, project financing, policy, and power marketing from the beginning stages of land development all the way to project construction and operations. 

We are a talent-centric company that believes deeply in empowering our team members with significant responsibility and creating a culture of inclusivity and diversity. We cultivate our team’s talent, providing each team member with the training, support, and incentives they need to grow and thrive at Cultivate Power. 

 Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Coordinating with internal project developers and external subject matter experts for the successful and timely execution of key development deliverables including the following: 
• Performing site diligence by reviewing environmental, utility, and other land features 
• Participating in land campaign strategies, negotiating land deals and supporting market development.  
• Support development of zoning/permit applications, environmental compliance, handling external consultants, and creating permitting site plans 
• Support the development of interconnection process of submitting a request or application and working with the applicable utility through necessary technical studies 
• Entering and maintaining key project data using cloud-based document management, relational databases, and reporting tools. Key project data management could include: 
• Onboarding new projects into data systems 
• Maintaining projections of upcoming payments, project budgets, and cash forecasts 
• Onboarding new consultant Scopes of Work, budgeting, and invoicing 
• Tracking interface with external stakeholders including landowners, consultants, utilities, permitting authorities, etc. 
• Creating and managing project and market dashboards and reports with the status of development activities for distribution to the market team and executive team 
• Creating and maintaining project-specific and market-wide maps to inform greenfield development efforts 

 Requirements: 

• A bachelor’s degree and 1-3 years working experience 
• Intellectual curiosity 
• Strong work ethic and ability to self-start in a fast-paced environment 
• Confidence to take initiative and work independently but also to ask questions and seek guidance when there are roadblocks 
• Results-driven and solutions-oriented 
• Strong organization, analytical, and communication skills and attention to detail 
• Familiarity with GIS Platforms and the ability to process GIS data is a plus 
• Demonstrated team-first mentality and willingness to go the extra mile to ensure team success  
• A bachelor’s degree focused on energy, environmental, business, or engineering industries is a plus 
• Working or internship experience in energy, environmental, or engineering industries is a plus 
• Strong Microsoft Office, specifically Microsoft Excel, skills required