Business development jobs

Business Development Jobs in Renewable Energy

Business development in renewable energy is the work of opening new markets, originating deals, and building the commercial partnerships that bring in revenue: offtake contracts, joint ventures, channel and distribution agreements, and entries into new countries or customer segments. The money behind it is large and still growing. BloombergNEF counted a record $2.3 trillion of energy transition investment in 2025, 8% more than a year earlier, and every part of it passed through someone's pipeline of opportunities first.

What the work involves

The job looks different depending on what a company sells. At a developer or utility, business development means origination: finding sites and partners, bidding into auctions, and signing the offtakers whose contracts make a project financeable. At an equipment or technology company, it means winning distributors, installers, and first reference customers in a new market. At a software or flexibility start-up, it means persuading utilities, grid operators, or fleet owners to run a pilot and then sign a framework deal. What connects all three is a long sales cycle, where months of technical and commercial work come before revenue.

Business development overlaps with, but is not the same as, sales. Many listings under this tag in Germany are for residential solar sales managers and field sales representatives, which sit closer to Sales & Account Management. Business development proper is about new channels and new markets rather than closing individual household orders.

Offtake and corporate buyers

Power purchase agreements are the heart of origination at developers and utilities, and the buyer market is concentrated. Corporations signed 55.9 GW of clean power purchase agreements in 2025, 10% less than the 2024 record, and Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft accounted for 49% of all activity. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa volumes fell 13% to 17 GW. For originators, that means competing hard for a small set of very large buyers while also finding deals with mid-sized industrial companies, which is slower work but less crowded. Knowledge of Power Purchase Agreements, from pricing structures to the risk each side carries, is the core technical skill.

Who hires

Utilities and developers such as Vattenfall, EDP Renewables, BayWa r.e., Scottish Power, and NextEra hire business developers for origination and new markets, often in hubs such as Hamburg, Berlin, London, Madrid, and Amsterdam. Prague appears because of employers such as TEDOM, the Czech maker of combined heat and power units, which sells its cogeneration plants well beyond its home market.

Newer business models create different roles. Axle Energy in London signs up EV chargers, batteries, and heat pumps to trade their flexibility, so its business developers sell to manufacturers and fleets rather than to power buyers. d.light sells solar lighting and home systems on pay-as-you-go terms across Africa and Asia, where business development means distribution partners and financing arrangements in markets without reliable grids.

Skills that command a premium

The strongest candidates understand the product well enough to talk to engineers. An originator who can read a grid connection offer, a yield report, and a term sheet, and see where they conflict, closes more deals than a pure salesperson. Experience in Project Development is the usual route in at developers, while technology companies prefer people who have launched a product in a new country before. Languages matter too, since most European roles cover several markets and many German roles require fluent German.