Senior Data Center Pre-Construction and Capacity Delivery Manager, EMEA

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

As a Senior Data Center Preconstruction & Capacity Delivery Manager at Anthropic, you'll make sure our EMEA deals are ready to execute before we commit to them, and you'll take time out of every program before the lease is signed. Delivery dates and costs on AI infrastructure deals are largely fixed at signature. What is missed before then is hard to recover afterwards, and our leverage over the schedule is at its highest while the deal is still open.

About 75% of your time goes to preconstruction and pre-lease management, from first desktop review through Letter of Intent (LOI) to lease execution. You'll test whether each opportunity can be delivered, rigorously accelerate its program, and shape the deal so that what a developer commits to can be held to, verified and delivered.

The other 25% goes to delivery. You'll carry that work through mobilization, embed with the partners building leased and partnered capacity, and lead them to deliver on the fastest possible schedule while maintaining a safe construction site and protecting the finished quality of the data center.

Our EMEA pipeline is getting off the ground, so you'll set the standard for how deals become ready for execution here. This role offers a unique opportunity to shape how Anthropic secures and activates the compute infrastructure needed to train and deploy frontier AI systems, working at the intersection of real estate, construction, and cutting-edge AI infrastructure.

Responsibilities - preconstruction and pre-lease management (about 75%)

Lead. This is a role where leadership trumps management and process. You will be expected to engage developers, contractors, utilities and our transaction teams early enough to shape the outcome of each deal rather than report on it afterwards.

• Confirm deal readiness and serve as the gatekeeper to validate transaction viability from LOI through lease execution, ensuring all predevelopment, planning, technical and business requirements are met before commitment
• Give transaction leads an early delivery view from desktop study on capacity, power, permitting, connectivity, schedule and cost, so that the sites moving to LOI are ones that can be delivered
• Run independent, evidence-based delivery due diligence on each opportunity, tested against source documents rather than relayed claims, covering capacity, power, permitting, connectivity, procurement, schedule, cost, and whether the developer's team, contractors and supply chain can deliver
• Interrogate every developer schedule from the native file rather than summary dates, testing logic, durations, production rates and critical paths, planning backwards from commissioning, and establishing the unconstrained date before any commercial protection is added
• Rigorously accelerate programs during the pre-lease phase by making schedule work a priority for the developer while the deal depends on it, pulling forward design, permitting, power, early works and procurement, and sequencing the build around how capacity turns up
• Assess contractor and supply-chain capacity and long-lead equipment needs for each opportunity, setting a long-lead strategy that secures delivery capacity ahead of need and making the case for early equipment funding where it protects a date
• Challenge Total Development Cost and delivery schedules against the assumptions behind Yield-on-Cost and IRR, flagging where time-to-power or cost exposure puts the investment case at risk
• Shape the delivery terms of the LOI, lease and supporting exhibits with transaction and legal teams, including phasing and target dates, landlord scope, diligence cost, ownership and reliance, risk allocation and governance, and check that the developer's contract with its general contractor carries the same milestones and aligns incentives around accelerated delivery
• Give deal and delivery leadership a clear go/no-go recommendation at each decision point up to signature, with the risks, conditions and mitigations behind it
• Keep one delivery-readiness record and one risk register across all EMEA opportunities, assigning every risk to an accountable owner, tracking it to resolution, and escalating where cost or schedule is threatened
• Direct owner's representatives and third-party advisers and assure what they produce, bringing design and engineering, cost, schedule, commercial, contracts and procurement into a single view of risk and readiness
• Develop and refine the preconstruction playbook, a reference log of unit costs and benchmarks, and the operating model needed to scale the function, using AI tools including Claude for first-pass assessment, document review and benchmarking so your time goes to judgment and negotiation
• Prepare and present regular executive reporting on readiness and risk for each opportunity and across the portfolio, including time from signature to construction start, risks found before versus after signature, and baseline-to-actual variance, supporting forward capacity planning and strategic decision-making

Responsibilities - delivery leadership (about 25%)

• Document the baseline at signature for design, budget, schedule, long-lead position, open risks and conditions, so delivery starts from an assured position whether you carry the project forward yourself or hand it to a delivery colleague
• Partner with landlords and developers post-deal to serve as Anthropic's primary point of contact, coordinating across internal stakeholders, tracking construction progress, and facilitating critical information exchange between development partners and Anthropic stakeholders
• You will be expected to be at one or more project sites in adequate amount to shape the culture, approach, and aggressiveness that define those extended site teams. The goal is to impact outcomes in a favorable manner.
• You are expected to be a force multiplier that develops and enhances the skillset that development partners, contractors, and key trades bring to the project(s) you are overseeing. That means being a subject matter expert in the various cross functional elements of data center delivery and increasing the team's performance with that knowledge and commitment to alignment.
• Represent Anthropic in key technical and operational decisions required by partners during the development process, ensuring our infrastructure requirements are met while maintaining strong partnerships
• Drive seamless handoffs to operational state with heavy focus on engagement across networking and deployment teams, enabling rapid workload turn-ups and minimizing time-to-production
• Identify and mitigate risks throughout the delivery lifecycle, proactively addressing blockers that could impact timeline, cost, or technical requirements, and feed what you learn on site back into diligence and the playbook

You may be a good fit if you:

• Have 8+ years of experience in preconstruction, development, or cost and commercial management on data center or other large mission-critical programs within EMEA, including time leading delivery on site. You won't have a big direct team to delegate to but will instead be able to treat the entire cross functional organizations around each deal and jobsite as your team.
• Have a track record of testing developer and contractor claims on cost, schedule, power and permitting against source documents, and of telling a deal team when a date does not hold up.
• Have taken time out of programs before construction started, and can show how. You read a native schedule fluently and know which levers in design, permitting, power and procurement move a date.
• Have shaped delivery terms in development, lease or construction agreements, working with legal teams, and have led tendering and bid analysis. You understand how cost and schedule flow through to the investment case.
• Have a strong understanding of the end to end (dirt to delivery) data center development process to include entitlements and permitting, planning and supply chain, execution, commissioning, and handover. You are not an administrator but an active player in the arena comfortable making decisions without the need to consult across multiple external parties.
• You should understand the nuances of data center design and construction across EMEA markets- who the players are, how power and permitting differ, what contractual norms get in the way of speed of delivery, how teams can be incentivized to build and deliver faster than normal.
• Have built or scaled a team or function, including directing third-party advisers.
• In this role you will often be on an island and responsible for your own destiny. You will have free rein to develop your own approaches with the mission guidance being your only bounds. No one will be there to empower your efforts, you will create your own influence by building relationships and diving in at all phases to deliver success.
• You must thrive operating with ambiguity and have a willingness to own outcomes, knowing that the buck stops with you.

It's a bonus if you:

• Understand AI/ML infrastructure requirements, including high-density power and advanced cooling systems
• Have had preconstruction or leadership positions (Preconstruction Manager, General Superintendent, Project Manager) within a GC, EPC or developer on hyperscale data center projects or in self performance of hyperscale data center development projects.
• Prioritize extreme ownership and have the ability to create winning cultures across diverse teams and job sites.
• Are deeply familiar with lease negotiations, construction contracts, or real estate development processes and have strategies to move those arrangements from traditionally transaction and risk managed arrangements to collaborative efforts that align incentives around accelerated delivery of facilities.
• Have secured long-lead equipment or manufacturing capacity ahead of a signed deal, including through frame agreements or early funding arrangements.
• Have run quantitative schedule risk analysis, or built parametric cost benchmarks across a portfolio of sites.
• Speak additional European languages.

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

Annual Salary: £1 — £1 GBP

Logistics

• Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience
• Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience
• Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position
• Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
• Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.