Development Roles

Pardon my ignorance, but can someone please explain the roles at a developer. I see entry level titles at a developer as “Acquisitions Analyst”. Is this a developer? What about an investment role at a developer? Who is a developer? What is the career progression at a developer? Does an “Acquisition Analyst” turn into a developer or is that separate? Sorry if this is obvious.

It's a fair question, because development firms are set up differently from company to company so there is no uniform answer. 

Back in the day, a developer was the quarterback of a project - the person who found the site, hired all of the consultants, raised the money, managed construction, leased it up or sold units, and then collected rent checks or sold it for a profit - soup to nuts. I was trained like this and still operate this way, but most of the large corporate firms now segregate responsibilities. I know "developers" who only acquire and entitle projects and then hand them off at land closing without any additional involvements. I know "developers" or are more or less construction guys. I know people who exist at every point in between the traditional definition and something hyper siloed. 

An acquisitions analyst at a development company may be an analyst for the site acquisition team OR they could be an analyst for the property acquisitions arm of a company that does both development and acquisitions. An investment role at a developer could be someone purely focused on capital raising (debt & equity) for the projects that someone else at the company entitles and someone else at the company builds or they could also be a property acquisitions person as well, since that is real estate investing. There is no title consistency in this industry. 

Finally, the career progression of a developer typically ends one of two ways - either they start doing deals on their own or they rise through the corporate ranks and manage a development office for a large development company.