Finance Lead

CSuite Financial Partners has been retained by our client, The Village Project, a San Francisco based aircraft leasing and real estate platform company, to place a Finance Lead with their growing team.

This role will be working directly with the founders, who have deep roots in aviation and real estate. They are looking for a partner who can handle the technical rigor of underwriting while also acting as the face of the company in the field.

About the Company

The Village Project (TVP) is an aircraft leasing company and real estate platform spun out of Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY) . It uses eVTOL aircraft to build walkable villages. Think college campuses, blue zones and European hill towns, offered as an alternative to the suburbs. These are places where you spend your days on your feet, surrounded by friends, family and nature, instead of losing a month a year to traffic between suburbs and strip malls.

Mission: TVP wants to change how people live so that life is happier, healthier, more active and more connected to community. About 70% of the land in today's towns goes to parking lots and roads. By moving that transportation into the sky, TVP can free the ground for the kinds of places people actually love. In the founder's words, the train gave us train towns, and the car gave us Levittown and the suburbs. Changing where and how we live happens about once a century, and TVP aims to set the pattern the rest of the world copies.

What TVP does: The company finds and evaluates land, selects development partners, raises project financing, gets entitlements from local governments, and builds trust with the communities where its villages will go. It is currently working on deals including one in Miami.

Culture: TVP is an early-stage, mission-driven startup that treats the work as a calling. As the founder puts it, "this is not work to live, it's live to work." The environment is high-autonomy, scrappy and admittedly chaotic. Every team member is expected to model a deal and also go out into rural towns to make friends, because "everything scales at the speed of trust."

Backed by Bain Capital (Real Estate & Ventures), JoeBen Bevirt (Joby Aviation), Palmer Luckey (Anduril), Ryan Johnson (Culdesac, Opendoor), and other pioneers working where real assets meet technology.

The Product

The Village Project is an aircraft leasing company and real estate development platform. It plans, finances and builds walkable, car-light villages linked by eVTOL ("flying car") aircraft from Joby Aviation. Because aircraft replace much of the land that roads and parking lots normally take up, these villages can be dense, pedestrian-first places inspired by college campuses, blue zones and European old towns. TVP covers the full development lifecycle:

• Finding sites and underwriting raw land
• Valuing mixed-use projects with multiple asset classes
• Selecting development partners
• Raising project-level capital
• Getting entitlements through city councils
• Engaging communities to win local trust

It focuses on exurban and rural communities across the US, with active deals including one in Miami.

About the role

• TVP is a spin-out of Joby Aviation that uses eVTOL aircraft to build walkable villages as an alternative to the suburbs. As one of our first four full-time hires, you will underwrite the future of how people live: half rigorous real estate fundamentals, half bringing people along with you.
• Evaluating raw land from first principles and building the models that decide whether TVP pursues a site, across multiple asset classes in a single village
• Selecting development partners and helping raise project financing for live deals, including one in Miami right now
• Leading diligence and negotiating with landowners, sellers, brokers, JV partners and capital partners
• Showing up in rural towns to build trust, make friends and make the case for flying-car villages, sometimes through entitlement hearings and door-to-door outreach
• Owning whatever you think will help the business most, in a high-autonomy, scrappy early-stage environment

Why you should join us!!

• Founding-team seat: You'd be one of TVP's first four full-time hires. You'll own finance end to end — from valuing raw dirt to raising project capital.
• Top-tier backing: TVP spun out of Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY) and has backing from Bain Capital Real Estate & Ventures plus JoeBen Bevirt, Palmer Luckey and Ryan Johnson.
• Real deals happening now: The team's already underwriting and raising capital for a village deal in Miami.
• Real estate with a purpose: TVP wants to take back the ~70% of town land that goes to roads and parking. You'd help set a pattern for how people live that only changes about once a century.
• Comp: $150K–$185K base with about 1% equity (4-year vest and 1-year cliff). You also get health insurance and a $2,500 travel stipend to visit urbanist places. It's hybrid SF but you can work from anywhere in the US.

Ideal Candidate Key Requirements

• Experience in real estate development or private equity (mixed- use developments, master- planned communities)
• 3+ years of ground-up real estate development, real estate private equity or project finance experience, ideally across site evaluation, entitlements, partner selection and capital raising (not only acquisitions of existing assets)
• Real estate due diligence and risk identification experience (environmental flags, title issues, flawed market assumptions)
• Strong first-principles underwriting skills across asset classes (mixed-use and master planned communities preferred), and the ability to explain complex deals clearly
• Hands-on negotiation and diligence experience: you have been at the table with sellers, brokers, partners, JV partners and capital partners.
• High-EQ, charismatic and low-ego, someone who would enjoy "running for office" in rural towns and is happy to travel often for deals
• Degree from a top university, and a mission-driven "live to work" outlook. Ideally, you are a bit disenchanted with institutional real estate and want more agency and impact

What we Offer!

• Competitive base salary in the range of $150-185k, DOE
• nearly 1% equity
• Premium health insurance
• Hybrid work environment
• High autonomy and ownership