Head of Business Development - Audio

Location: New York, NY (Hybrid)
Type: Full-time, Individual Contributor with headcount to build Compensation: $300,000 - $350,000 OTE, plus equity

Our client is building the future of Performance Audio. Audio consumption is massive, on demand audio streams and podcast listening continue to grow at scale, yet investment has not kept pace. Search and social spend dwarfs audio spend combined. The gap is not reach, it is proof. Audio has been positioned as a branding channel because performance has been hard to measure, hard to optimize in flight and hard to scale across fragmented platforms.

Our client closes that gap. They make audio addressable at scale, measurable through credible third-party methodologies, and optimizable with the rigor performance-minded marketers expect. They do not resell individual shows or inventory. They operate above the major audio platforms, using AI, contextual understanding and years of performance signals to qualify, customize, activate and optimize campaigns across the leading audio ecosystems.

This is a founding, supply-side seat. The commercial team sells Performance Audio to advertisers, you build the thing they sell. You will win and onboard podcast publishers, take their catalogs from signed to earning, assemble those publishers into a network with real coverage, and negotiate the third-party measurement partnerships that let audio be held accountable to conversion, footfall and brand lift.

You will start as an individual contributor and build a team behind you once the network is proven.

• Own the end-to-end business development cycle with podcast publishers and networks: sourcing, first contact, discovery, commercial negotiation, technical validation and launch
• Target both the concentrated top of the market and the structurally undersold long tail
• Negotiate the full range of supply agreements:
  SaaS and platform terms, revenue share, minimum guarantees, exclusivity and category carve-outs
• Build the ROI and forecasting models that let a publisher see the value of joining before they sign

• Own the operational path from executed agreement to live, earning inventory: catalog ingestion, feed and API integration, data onboarding, content analysis and QA
• Work with Product and Solutions Engineering to make sure new supply arrives in a state the platform can actually use

• Build the network deliberately, mapping coverage against genre, format, market and audience, and prioritizing the partners who close the gaps
• Identify and close strategic channel and platform partnerships that unlock supply at scale
• Own network health post-launch: usage and revenue KPIs, quarterly business reviews, account planning, expansion and executive relationships

• Source, negotiate and manage relationships with third-party measurement providers across online conversion, drive-to-store and brand lift
• Drive the industry shift from downloads to actual audience consumption

• Be the market signal into Product, bringing publisher objections, integration friction, competitive terms and measurement gaps back to leadership with clear go-to-market recommendations
• Define what the supply and partnerships function should look like at scale, then hire and lead it

• 10+ years in business development, partnerships or platform sales, including significant time in digital audio, podcasting or ad technology
• A documented record of winning top-tier podcast publishers or media partners as net-new logos, with the timeline it took
• Deep experience negotiating complex commercial structures:
  SaaS and platform agreements, revenue share, minimum…