A development leader for wind power projects, you shepherd projects from concept through permitting, interconnection, and financing — landowner relationships, regulatory navigation, capital markets engagement, and the team that moves projects to NTP.
A typical week often involves landowner conversations, permit coordination, interconnection studies, and financial-model review — working with originators on new sites, prepping permit applications, coordinating utility-interconnection studies, building project pro formas. You're often carrying multiple pipeline projects at different stages while focusing on the next major decision point. Pipeline megawatts, projects advanced, and capital-partner readiness are the visible measures.
The harder part is often the high pre-financial-close attrition — many sites die during permitting, interconnection, or financing, and the development manager invests significant time in projects that may never materialize. Variance across employers is wide: at major renewable developers you have legal, finance, and permitting infrastructure; at smaller developers you're assembling the team project by project.
People who tend to thrive here have commercial real-estate fluency, regulatory patience, and the financial literacy to engage with capital partners. The trade-off is the multi-year arc of development work and the comfort with sunk-cost projects that don't reach commercial operation.
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Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
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Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Business Operations roles →A development leader for wind power projects, you shepherd projects from concept through permitting, interconnection, and financing — landowner relationships, regulatory navigation, capital markets engagement, and the team that moves projects to NTP.
Median pay for a Wind Power Development Manager is about $137K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $69K to $228K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Active Listening, Speaking, Critical Thinking, Monitoring, and Reading Comprehension.
Most people in this role hold a postsecondary certificate.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 4.5% through 2034, with roughly 630,980 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Development Director, Site Manager, and Wind Site Manager.
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