Role: Startups Lead

Department: Go-to-Market & Partnerships

Location: San Francisco or New York

Employment type: Full-time

About Liquid AI

Liquid AI’s mission is to build efficient, general-purpose intelligence at every scale. Founded out of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in 2023, we build small, efficient, and fast foundation models that can run directly on devices, including without an internet connection. We are scaling and need exceptional people to drive our growth.

About the role

We are seeking a Startups Lead to build and run how Liquid AI acquires, supports, and grows startup customers. You will work directly with founders and technical teams to help them build with Liquid, own commercial opportunities, and develop the partnerships and programs that let us reach and serve more startups.

This role combines sales, business development, and program ownership. You will personally source customers, run discovery, advance evaluations, negotiate agreements, and grow accounts. You will also design and operate the startup offering, onboarding experience, partner channels, and repeatable processes that make the motion scale. What you learn in customer conversations should improve the program; the program should create more successful customers and revenue.

You will work closely with business leadership, Product, Marketing, and our technical teams. You should be comfortable moving between a founder conversation, a commercial proposal, a program launch, and the details of follow-up and reporting. This is a hands-on role with broad ownership and the opportunity to shape an important part of Liquid’s go-to-market strategy.

Responsibilities

• Own startup customers and revenue. Source and qualify opportunities, build relationships with founders and technical decision-makers, and lead deals through evaluation, negotiation, close, and expansion. Stay close to customers as they move into production and their needs grow.

• Define where we focus. Identify the startup segments, use cases, and stages where Liquid can offer compelling value. Decide which accounts need direct engagement and which can succeed through shared resources, group programs, and automated engagement.

• Build and run the startup program. Define eligibility, benefits, onboarding, engagement, and progression into paid relationships. Work with Finance and other teams on commercial incentives and program economics, then manage the rollout and ongoing operations.

• Help customers get to production. Understand their product, model requirements, deployment constraints, and business goals. Coordinate evaluations with our technical teams, agree on success criteria and next steps, and resolve blockers while keeping scope and commitments realistic.

• Develop channels into the startup ecosystem. Build and manage relationships with VCs, accelerators, incubators, and relevant developer communities. Turn those relationships into introductions, joint programs, and sustained engagement with companies that can benefit from Liquid.

• Execute programs end to end. Own plans, timelines, budgets, internal dependencies, and follow-through for onboarding cohorts, founder sessions, technical workshops, and partner initiatives. Work with Marketing and technical colleagues on content and delivery, and personally drive customer follow-up.

• Make successful approaches repeatable. Turn customer learning into qualification criteria, outreach, onboarding materials, account playbooks, and clear handoffs. Use CRM workflows, automation, and self-service resources to serve a growing customer base efficiently.

• Measure and improve the motion. Track qualified pipeline, production adoption, paid conversion, retained usage, expansion revenue, and program cost. Maintain a credible forecast, compare results across acquisition channels and customer cohorts, and change or stop activities based on what the evidence shows.

• Bring startup needs into Liquid. Translate recurring product gaps, technical friction, pricing feedback, and competitive objections into clear recommendations for our product roadmap, developer experience, and positioning.
  
  

Desired experience

• 5–10 years of relevant experience across sales, business development, partnerships, startup programs, or go-to-market roles for technical products, with meaningful experience both winning customers and building repeatable programs.

• A record of personally sourcing, closing, and growing customer relationships. You can explain your commercial contribution, how you advanced decisions, and the revenue or adoption outcomes you delivered.

• Experience creating and operating a program or sales motion from an initial idea through launch, iteration, and scale. You have owned the recurring work and can show what improved as the program grew.

• Credibility with startup founders, CTOs, and developers. You understand how startups evaluate technology, balance speed and cost, and make buying decisions as their products and teams evolve.

• Technical fluency in AI/ML, APIs, developer tools, or related infrastructure. You can discuss model quality, latency, cost, and deployment choices, ask useful questions, and work effectively with engineers.

• Strong project management and analytical skills. You can coordinate work across teams, manage several customer and program priorities at once, and use CRM and product usage data to diagnose problems and decide what to do next.

• Experience working with ambiguity at an early-stage or growth-stage company. You take initiative, write clearly, follow through on details, and make practical tradeoffs about where your time and the team’s resources will have the most impact.
  
  

Additional experience we value

• Building startup or developer programs at an AI, cloud, infrastructure, or developer platform company; relationships with VCs, accelerators, and founder communities.

• Experience as a founder or early startup operator, or in a customer-facing technical role with commercial responsibility.
  
  

What we offer

• Compensation: Competitive base salary, variable compensation, and equity.

• Health: We pay 100% of medical, dental, and vision premiums for employees and dependents.

• Financial: 401(k) matching up to 4% of base pay.

• Time off: Unlimited PTO plus company-wide Refill Days throughout the year.