Head of Academic Partners & Programs, Fauna Robotics

Fauna Robotics is building the future of personal robotics — and we want it to be the best platform for researchers and developers to build on. We’re looking for a leader to build and scale our academic segment: the programs, partnerships, and mechanisms that put Fauna robots into the hands of the world’s top robotics researchers and turn them into a thriving, self-reinforcing community.

Fauna Robotics is building the future of personal robotics — and we want it to be the best platform for researchers and developers to build on. We’re looking for a leader to build and scale our academic segment: the programs, partnerships, and mechanisms that put Fauna robots into the hands of the world’s top robotics researchers and turn them into a thriving, self-reinforcing community.

You will own the strategy, the relationships, and the sales channel end-to-end — from a researcher's first pilot to institution-wide adoption. You will own how labs evaluate, acquire, and expand their Fauna fleets. You'll design the grant and phased-access programs that put robots in researchers' hands, and run the pilots that prove them out. You'll represent Fauna where researchers gather — ICRA, RSS, CoRL, IROS, HRI — and cultivate a community of people building on our platform.

You will be Fauna’s primary point of engagement with the robotics research community. You’ll own the strategy and the relationships end-to-end — from qualifying a priority lab to scaling adoption across an entire institution. You’ll design the grant and phased-access programs that put robots in researchers’ hands, and run the pilots that prove them out. You’ll represent Fauna where researchers gather — ICRA, RSS, CoRL, IROS, HRI — and cultivate a community of people building on our platform.

And you’ll own the sales channel for the segment — the paths by which labs evaluate, acquire, and expand their Fauna fleets.

Just as importantly, you’ll be the bridge between that community and our product org — translating what researchers discover into a clearer roadmap, better robots, and a stronger talent pipeline. This is a role for someone who works shoulder-to-shoulder with scientists and AI researchers, knows the rhythms of academic life, and wants to build the definitive research robotics platform with them.

This role owns the research/academic segment end-to-end as its relationship, program, sales, and customer-success lead. You’ll work hand-in-hand with partner functions — product, fleet operations & logistics, data/telemetry engineering, and our broader ecosystem team — who own the shared infrastructure, so you can stay focused on strategy, relationships, and impact.

• Own the strategy for Fauna’s academic segment: map and prioritize target institutions and labs, define what makes Fauna the platform of choice for researchers, and set the adoption plan.
• Manage our pipeline of funded labs, principal investigators, and technical champions — qualifying opportunities on research value, funding path, influence, and expansion potential.
• Own the sales channel for the research segment — the paths by which labs and institutions acquire, deploy, and grow their Fauna fleets, always grounded in research fit.
• Partner with fleet operations, finance, and legal to structure the grant, sponsored-research, pricing, and purchase options that fit how universities actually buy.
• Build repeatable paths and clean handoffs from an individual researcher to lab- and institution-wide adoption.
• Serve as the connection between Amazon-internal research and academic teams and Fauna product/engineering, coordinating with Amazon Robotics and Amazon Science on shared interests.

• Own the university grant program end-to-end: application,…