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Soapy Joe's Car Wash · 1 day ago

Director of Development

Santee, CA

Full-time

Hybrid

Director/Executive

$150K/yr - $210K/yr

10+ years exp

Soapy Joe's Car Wash is committed to cleaning cars and protecting the environment while shining in their communities. They are seeking an experienced Director of Development to oversee the development program, ensuring projects meet standards and support expansion efforts. The role involves managing site pipelines, standardizing prototypes, and leading due diligence and construction execution.

AutomotiveAutonomous VehiclesService Industry

Growth Opportunities

Responsibilities

Build and maintain a disciplined site pipeline aligned with the Executive Team and Boards growth targets

Apply a standardized underwriting framework, including (not limited to) demographics, traffic counts, ingress/egress quality, environmental risk, entitlement complexity, and unit-level EBITDA projections

Partner with brokers, landlords, and developers to source ground-up, ground-lease, and acquisition opportunities. Ensure that no one enters our market with a deal or site that we did not pass on

Enforce go/no-go criteria and stakeholder sign-off to ensure only high-conviction sites proceed

Negotiate LOIs, PSAs, and leases to maximize yield and control long-term economics

Own the company’s standardized prototype: building design, tunnel layout, equipment specification, civil footprint, utility configuration, and brand aesthetics

Partner with Procurement, Site management, Strategy and Operations, to ensure that vendor and equipment selection is always best in class at best pricing. Continuous cost driving and service level improvement

Implement strict change-control procedures; no deviations from prototype without ROI-backed justification and executive approval

Manage architect/engineer partners to deliver consistent, permit-ready drawing sets across all markets

Drive value engineering to reduce cost per site without compromising throughput, guest experience, or structural quality

Lead all due diligence workflows: ALTA surveys, environmental, geotechnical, utilities, traffic analysis, stormwater, and entitlements. Ensure work is done right before any meaningful capital outlay

Establish milestone gates and deadlines and hold vendors accountable to cycle-time metrics and ensure significant protections to offset any impact to our underwriting

Lead all zoning, entitlement, and permitting processes—including hearings, community outreach, and city negotiations. Ensure playbooks are established and are constantly adjusted for new findings and lessons for all of our locales

Report entitlement risk and expected timelines to leadership immediately

Own the delivery of each project against budget, timeline, and prototype and show lessons learned after each build

Standardize the GC bid package, contract structure, and RFP cadence

Enforce cost controls: change-order governance, schedule variance reporting, and contingency management

Coordinate tunnel equipment procurement and ensure install aligns with development milestones. Constantly evaluate the standardized tunnel layouts and reconfigure future sites

Conduct site walks, manage weekly construction calls, and resolve RFIs proactively

Deliver sites with zero preventable delays, minimal punch items, and full readiness for Operations

Establish KPIs for cycle time, cost per site, change-order rate, prototype compliance, permitting duration, and on-time delivery

Maintain dashboards for executive leadership that can be reviewed and understood with less meetings, with variance reporting and risk flags

Lead cross-functional alignment with Operations, Finance, Legal, and Real Estate

Qualification

Development experienceConstruction managementPermittingEntitlementFinancial acumenStakeholder managementNegotiation skillsProject managementCommunication skillsTeam leadershipProblem-solving