Senior Manager, Commercial Contracts

Fervo Energy • Houston, TX

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Commercial Contracts provides end-to-end commercial leadership for major equipment supply agreements and other strategic project contracts, from sourcing and negotiation through contract administration and closeout. The role works across Legal, Supply Chain, Engineering, Project Management, Construction, Commissioning, Operations, and Finance, and reports to the Senior Counsel with a dotted-line relationship to Procurement leadership.

Serving as a liaison between Legal, Supply Chain, and Engineering, this position provides commercial continuity, contract discipline, and portfolio visibility. Legal owns drafting, Procurement owns sourcing strategy and supplier selection, and Engineering owns technical scope and acceptance. The Senior Manager helps convert those decisions into executable agreements and enforces them through performance. The role also builds and improves contract-management processes, including contract lifecycle management (CLM) systems and practical AI-enabled workflows.

Fervo Energy is a modern power company developing next-generation geothermal resources. Its mission is to make geothermal a dependable, affordable source of around-the-clock clean power. The role is hybrid and based in Houston, Texas, with regular in-office collaboration and periodic travel to project sites and supplier facilities. Employees are expected to work in the office three days per week.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, construction management, supply chain, business, finance, law, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in commercial contract management, project procurement, equipment contracting, claims, or related project-execution roles.
• Demonstrated experience negotiating and administering high-value equipment supply, EPC, construction, services, or other complex industrial agreements.
• Substantial post-award experience managing changes, claims, notices, warranties, supplier performance, and contract closeout.
• Strong working knowledge of payment milestones, schedule remedies, performance obligations, warranties, acceptance, changes, liability allocation, insurance, security, and termination rights.
• Ability to drive decisions across functions without direct authority and communicate complex commercial issues in concise, decision-ready terms.
• Hands-on experience improving contract work with AI, CLM, or comparable workflow tools, including workflow design, testing, data structuring, reporting, or implementation ownership.
• Ability to evaluate AI outputs against source documents and apply appropriate controls for accuracy, confidentiality, security, and human accountability.
• Willingness to travel to project sites, supplier facilities, factory acceptance tests, and commercial meetings as needed.

Nice To Haves

• Owner- or developer-side experience combined with experience at an EPC contractor, OEM, or complex industrial supplier.
• Experience in power generation, renewable energy, data-center power, or other major industrial infrastructure.
• Experience with turbines or ORC systems, heat exchangers, pumps, process skids, transformers, switchgear, control systems, or comparable long-lead equipment.
• Experience with fast-track, first-of-a-kind, or design-evolving projects.
• Experience as a process owner, product owner, administrator, or implementation lead for a CLM platform, AI-enabled contracting solution, or related reporting system, with measurable improvement in a contract-management outcome.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Procurement and Engineering to plan and execute sourcing events for assigned major equipment and construction contracts, including commercial RFP content, contractual exceptions, bid evaluation, and award recommendations.
• Lead day-to-day negotiations of equipment supply agreements, purchase terms, framework agreements, services agreements, amendments, and related commercial instruments under Legal’s direction.
• Establish and maintain a contract-management plan for each assigned agreement, covering obligations, milestones, deliverables, notices, changes, payment conditions, liquidated damages, securities, acceptance requirements, and warranty periods.
• Serve as the principal commercial contracts contact for assigned suppliers after award and maintain the definitive record of notices, decisions, changes, claims, backcharges, and unresolved obligations.
• Administer change control, evaluate supplier requests with Engineering, Project Controls, and Procurement, and negotiate approved change orders and commercial settlements within delegated authority.
• Lead commercial management of warranty claims and supplier recoveries, including repair, replacement, reperformance, field service, expedited logistics, and recoverable costs.
• Establish supplier performance measures and KPIs, lead periodic commercial reviews, and provide early warning of material cost, schedule, performance, and contractual risks.
• Coordinate amendments, cure notices, reservations of rights, and other formal correspondence with Legal, and support material disputes with an organized factual and contractual record.
• Maintain concise portfolio reporting on negotiations, obligations, changes, claims, warranties, supplier exposure, deadlines, and required management decisions.
• Conduct after-action reviews following agreement closeout and provide feedback to Legal, Procurement, and Engineering to improve future contracting and sourcing decisions.
• Develop scalable contract-management procedures, templates, playbooks, registers, and training, and incorporate execution lessons into future contracts and procurement decisions.
• Assess current contracting and post-execution processes from first principles and serve as business process owner for CLM workflows covering intake, negotiation, approvals, obligations, notices, changes, warranties, claims, and closeout.
• Apply AI to defined contract-management use cases such as clause and obligation extraction, contract summaries, notice preparation, issue tracking, and reporting, with suitable validation, human review, confidentiality, security, and access controls.
• Use contract data and baseline measures to improve cycle time, notice compliance, change-order aging, warranty recovery, data quality, and user adoption.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision plan options.
• Employer-paid basic life insurance and short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• A 401(k) plan with up to 6% match.
• Flexible paid time off and paid parental leave.
• Family-building, fertility, hormonal health, pregnancy, postpartum, and parenting support through Carrot.
• A dependent care FSA for eligible child and elder care expenses.
• An annual Lifestyle Spending Account for eligible wellness expenses, including fitness, financial planning, pet insurance, and pet care.
• Employee ownership opportunities through Fervo’s Employee Stock Purchase Program, as well as stock option grants and bonus opportunities for eligible roles.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior