Senior Development Manager: Financial Close Romania

<h2><strong>Background to Aukera</strong></h2><p>Aukera is a leading pan-European renewable energy developer and Independent Power Producer (IPP), dedicated to accelerating the energy transition across the continent. Headquartered in Belgium, we have offices in Brussels, Bucharest, London, Edinburgh, Rome, Berlin, Madrid and Seville. Aukera manage a diversified pipeline of over 15 GW in onshore wind, solar, and battery energy storage system (BESS) projects. </p><p>We pride ourselves on our values and our collaborative, supportive working environment. Our team is friendly, caring, highly professional, and deeply committed to making a real impact on the planet. As a rapidly growing company, we seek high performers from all backgrounds who are self-motivated, take ownership, and are passionate about driving improvements. We value diversity and are proud to have an international team representing 14 nationalities, with approx. 30% female employees. At Aukera, mutual respect and effective collaboration are at the heart of everything we do.</p><h2>Role Overview</h2><p><strong>Job Location: </strong>Bucharest<br/></p><p><strong>Reports to</strong>: Head of Closing, Aukera<br/></p><p>We are seeking an experienced and highly collaborative Senior Development Manager to drive projects from the Ready to Build stage (RTB) to Financial Close (FC). This role is critical in ensuring that all regulatory, technical, and commercial conditions are met to transition projects from development to execution. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in land &amp; permitting processes, stakeholder management, and project finance support, particularly in the renewable energy or infrastructure sectors.</p><p>This is an opportunity for someone to help establish the processes and ways of working, to help build a financial close process for Aukera that is agile, well managed, and repeatable.</p><h2>Key Responsibilities</h2><p>The core of this role is hands-on project management from RTB to FC. </p><p>This person needs to have a full understanding of what is required to bring the project through this development stage, and be capable of stepping into the detail if needed.</p><p>The key areas of responsibility include:- </p><h3>Project initiation – setting up the project for success from day 1</h3><ul> <li>Engaging the Aukera teams from across the business, agreeing roles and responsibilities.</li> <li>Build and run the project plan, identifying key stages, milestones, and timescales.</li> <li>Coordinate with development, engineering, legal, procurement, construction, grid and investment teams to identify all requirements, and build them into the project plan with appropriate dependencies to ensure all conditions precedent are met.</li> <li>Build the project plan.</li> <li>Ensuring 3rd party advisors and consultants are identified and engaged.</li> </ul><h3>Day to Day Project Management</h3><ul> <li>Track and manage project timelines, risks, and deliverables related to project closing. </li> <li>Design and operate an efficient reporting process to provide regular updates to senior management on land, permitting progress, risks and Financial Close progress.</li> <li>Maintain accurate records of all land, permits, conditions, and correspondence.</li> <li>Stakeholder management processes.</li> </ul><h3>Land &amp; Permitting Project Deliverables</h3><ul> <li>The candidate should have extensive experience in land and permitting management and should understand all the intricacies for the project they are managing.</li> <li>The existing development team are responsible for all land and permitting, however they may not have the capacity required to bring projects to financial close without further support</li> <li>The Candidate should be prepared to step in to coach, support or lead on development activities which may include:-</li> <ul> <li>Further negotiations on land rights, grid, planning and PPAs where required.</li> <li>Managing resolutions to red-flag reports.</li> <li>Coordinating the completion of secondary permitting activities.</li> <li>Ensuring compliance with all regulatory conditions attached to primary permits.</li> <li>Liaising with local, regional, and national authorities to secure outstanding approvals. </li> <li>Managing environmental, archaeological, and technical studies required for final permits. </li> <li>Stakeholder Management: Maintaining strong relationships with permitting authorities, consultants, and local communities.</li> </ul><h3>Bus Driver for the Financial Close Process</h3><li>This role is responsible for bringing the project to financial close. The candidate should have expertise across both Development and Financing. They should understand all the dependencies between them, and potential issues and solutions. </li> <li>Provide the interface between development and project finance.</li> <li>Provide land &amp; permitting-related inputs for due diligence.</li> <li>Support the preparation of data rooms