Head of AI Ecosystem Intelligence

Holtzbrinck is one of the world's leading media companies. We're home to Springer Nature, Macmillan Publishers, Macmillan Learning, DIE ZEIT, and Digital Science, with a portfolio spanning science, education, literature, and journalism. Our values, curiosity, commitment, and passion, carried us to over 14,000 people, more than 120 countries, and over USD 4 billion in revenue.

Based in San Francisco, the AI Hub sits at the intersection of a global media group and the world's most vibrant AI ecosystem. We shape the group's AI strategy, build partnerships with leading AI labs, run programs that grow AI capability across our companies, and invest in what comes next. We work directly with the Executive Board, leaders and builders across the portfolio.

The most important developments in AI happen within a few miles of our office, and your job is being in those rooms. You grow our network across AI labs, startups, VCs, and academia. You understand our strategic priorities and find the people who share them: as participants for our events, as partners, as founders. And when the right format doesn't exist yet, you can create it: a dinner series, a hackathon, a summit.

The intelligence we need lives in conversations, not reports. You spend your time where AI is actually happening, with the convening power of a global knowledge and media group behind you.

Your screening and judgment directly shape which startups reach diligence and which partnerships get pursued.

This role is based at our office at 44 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, with regular presence across the Bay Area ecosystem. On-the-ground attendance is a core requirement of the role. Expect your calendar to be a mix of our office, labs and startup offices, conferences, dinners, and demo nights.

You work directly on Holtzbrinck's strategic AI priorities: agentic research workflows, the future of science education, agent-ready publishing, multimodal storytelling formats across science, non-fiction, fiction, and news, and more.

• Build and maintain an actively managed network across the Bay Area AI ecosystem, relevant to Holtzbrinck's sectors and tracked systematically
• Draft regular ecosystem and investment insight briefings for the Executive Board and portfolio leadership teams
• Source, screen, and brief startup opportunities that feed the Hub's investment decisions
• Make targeted matches: connect portfolio companies with the builders, tools, and partners they actually need
• Feed frontline intelligence (trends, signals, deal flow, who's building what) into the team's briefings and investment analyses
• Represent Holtzbrinck with founders, researchers, and investors, and bring the best of them to our table
• You report directly to the Managing Director and regularly brief the Executive Board

• A living, CRM-tracked network across labs, startups, VCs, and academia that surfaces insights and leads to collaboration
• A steady flow of qualified, screened startups reaches the investment pipeline, with several advancing to serious diligence in year one
• Founder scouting for our entrepreneur in residence program
• Your work shapes how the group’s leaders and builders think about AI
• Portfolio CEOs cite introductions you made as the origin of pilots, partnerships, or deals
• Founders and investors know Holtzbrinck as a serious ecosystem player

• Robust relationships across the Bay Area AI ecosystem, spanning AI Labs, big tech, startups and builders, investors, and academia in the Bay Area, or a track record that proves you can build them fast
• A track record in venture capital, strategy, startup BD, or an ecosystem role
• Technical fluency: you've built with AI tools, can read a demo critically
• Genuine dedication to science, education, and/or media, and the eagerness to deeply understand Holtzbrinck's strategy
• Strong analytical thinking and communication skills: you turn frontline signals into strategic insights for executive audiences while speaking the language of builders
• Signal over noise: you distill twenty conversations into takeaways the team can act on

The salary range for this role is $157,000 - $191,000.

Macmillan Publishers is the U.S. trade company that is part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a large family-owned group of media companies headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's publishing companies include prominent imprints around the world that publish a broad range of award-winning books for children and adults in all…