Director Real Estate

Ayr Wellness is a leading U.S. multi-state cannabis operator with more than 90 licensed retail locations across Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Nevada, Virginia, and Delaware. We cultivate, manufacture, and sell a broad portfolio of high-quality cannabis products, proudly serving both medical patients and adult-use consumers across our markets.

At Ayr, our strength lies in our people. We’re re-imagining how we work across every part of our business, and we’re looking for builders and doers to roll up their sleeves and help shape what’s next.

The cannabis industry is fast-moving, complex, and full of opportunity. Together, we’re not only shaping a company, but also building the future of cannabis. At Ayr you’ll have the opportunity to make a lasting impact while growing your career alongside a company positioning itself for long-term success.

The Director of Real Estate leads Ayr’s real estate strategy and execution across our multi-state footprint, from market evaluation and site selection through lease negotiation, build-out handoff, and ongoing lease portfolio management.

This role sits at the intersection of real estate, cannabis regulation, and operations: identifying locations that meet both commercial criteria and state and local cannabis requirements, building the business case for each site, and guiding deals from LOI to signed lease in close partnership with Legal, Compliance, Finance, Construction, Facilities, and Retail Leadership. This role also owns the ongoing management of Ayr’s lease portfolio and landlord relationships and manages the performance of our external brokerage partners.

This is a high-visibility, high-travel role supporting an active expansion pipeline. Success in this role is measured by pipeline coverage against planned openings and licensing deadlines, entitlement approvals, on-time and on-budget store openings, occupancy cost as a percentage of sales, and new-store payback.

• Lead market evaluation for new locations using defined site criteria, including population density, demographics, employment and growth trends, universities, and regional drivers.
• Build and maintain a multi-state site pipeline aligned to licensing application windows, capital plans, and opening targets, with enough pipeline coverage to absorb site attrition.
• Conduct white-space mapping and competitive reviews to prioritize target cities and regions; partner with IT on mapping and sensitive-use (buffer zone) analysis.
• Direct and oversee brokerage partners in identifying available properties that meet site criteria including requirements such as traffic, visibility, size, parking, and access.
• Partner with Facilities to evaluate power, water, utilities, and logistics, including proximity to the retail locations being supplied.
• Validate that target jurisdictions permit cannabis operations (zoning, municipal moratoriums, special use requirements) and that sites align with state licensing requirements, including buffer zones and distance restrictions from sensitive uses and other dispensaries, in partnership with Compliance and Legal.
• Coordinate with Licensing and Compliance so site decisions line up with application windows and scoring criteria.
• Support community and local government engagement, such town halls and special use permit processes, as required by the jurisdiction.

• Partner with Finance to build site-level financial analysis (MPV) and KPIs for each opportunity.
• Develop market-entry analyses using demographics, traffic, competitor density, and sales forecasts to support new-market and in-market growth decisions.
• Prepare and present site recommendations…