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 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 yoursel