Applied AI & Partnerships

The Role

We are looking for an exceptional individual to join our Applied AI & Partnerships team in a high-impact, high-ownership role. This role is critical to the company: you will help build and scale our ecosystem by driving partner activation and growth, shape the ecosystem strategy that expands adoption, and ensure partner learnings (qualitative and quantitative) flow back into product and model improvements.

You will be a central force in building and advancing relationships, maximizing their utility for both the company and our partners, and keeping complex, cross-functional work moving. Being optimally successful requires building a deep understanding of what matters to partners, earning their trust through responsiveness and follow-through, and aligning roadmaps and expectations across teams. You should be comfortable engaging with a diversity of partners and industries, and flexing between strategic thinking, operational rigor, and crisp external and internal communication.

This is a high-growth role with significant visibility, direct exposure to leadership, and real ownership of outcomes. This role is in-person five days a week based in San Mateo, CA.

• Strategic partnership execution:
  Own and drive a portfolio of high-impact partner initiatives end-to-end, ensuring alignment with company goals and maximizing long-term value.

• Partnership evaluation and selection:
  Evaluate incoming ecosystem and partnership opportunities, prioritize them, and ensure alignment with strategic objectives.

• Ecosystem growth strategy:
  Define and drive ecosystem initiatives that expand adoption and deepen partner engagement (programs, partner journeys, scalable motions, playbooks).

• Executive communication:
  Serve as a primary point of contact for partner work streams—respond rapidly, navigate complex organizational structures, and keep initiatives moving forward through clear next steps and timelines.

• Cross-functional coordination:
  Centralize communication and documentation across product, ML/engineering, GTM, and partnerships stakeholders to optimize efficiency and minimize disruption.

• Operational execution:
  Translate ambiguity into execution, coordinate the details, and follow through relentlessly

• Communications and narrative:
  Develop and ship ecosystem-facing and internal materials to ensure consistent messaging around launches and key moments.

• Metrics and tracking:
  Develop and maintain centralized tracking systems to monitor ecosystem/partnership metrics, milestones, and outcomes; use data to drive decisions and next actions.

• Insights and feedback loops:
  Capture partner learnings and package them into actionable internal recommendations supporting durable product/model feedback loops.

• Travel:
  Ability to travel periodically to build relationships, support partners, and attend conferences as needed.

• 3–5 years of professional experience in a highly demanding, high-ownership environment, such as management consulting, technology companies, and/or startups, with a track record of delivering high-quality work on tight timelines.

• Proven experience driving cross-functional initiatives in one or more of: strategy & ops/biz ops, partnerships, ecosystem programs, product ops, program management, or growth/ops.

• Demonstrated ability to create clarity from ambiguity, prioritize effectively, and execute end-to-end with minimal oversight.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to produce crisp partner-facing narratives and exec-ready internal updates.

• Strong interpersonal skills and high responsiveness; able to build trust with external partners and internal teams at all levels.

• Comfort with metrics and operational tracking; able to build and maintain simple systems (trackers, reporting cadences, templates) and use data to drive decisions.

• High integrity and reliability; consistent follow-through and strong ownership mindset.

• Prior experience building or scaling ecosystem motions, such as in a growth-stage startup.

• Experience working in AI/ML, robotics, developer platforms, or other complex technical/product-driven ecosystems.

• Experience owning…