Head of Strategic Partnerships, Autonomous AI (SF)

Strategic Partnerships Architect

Lavendo partners with startups and high-growth companies to help them hire top-tier sales, GTM, and technical talent. This role is with one of our clients; we'll share full details about the company and interview process as we get to know you and confirm mutual fit.

About the Company

Our client is a category-defining AI company on a mission to bring full autonomy to software engineering. Their platform empowers the world's largest engineering organizations to build truly autonomous software development lifecycles — where every signal an engineering system generates is intercepted by an AI agent that takes the first pass and brings it to a human. Customers include global enterprises such as Nvidia, Adobe, and Ernst & Young. The company scaled from $0 to $100M ARR in just twelve months and recently closed a $150M Series C.

The Mission

To usher in the native wave of agent-driven software development — not just improving individual developer productivity, but transforming how entire engineering organizations build, maintain, and scale software.

The Opportunity

This is a high-leverage, 0-to-1 role at one of the fastest-scaling AI companies in the world. You'll architect and own the entire strategic partnerships function — spanning AI labs, cloud hyperscalers, and SDLC platform partners — at a pivotal inflection point. You'll report directly to a senior company leader, have a clear line to the founders, and define what world-class strategic partnerships look like in the autonomous AI era. There is no playbook. You'll write it.

What You'll Do

• Own and architect the 90-day and 6-month partnership roadmaps across all current strategic partners

• Identify and prioritize the next wave of partners the company should be working with

• Build partnerships with AI model labs — including for post-training, data evaluations, and collaborative research

• Extend the product through strategic integrations across the full software development lifecycle, embodying a modular, composable product philosophy

• Drive deep co-sell and co-build motions with cloud hyperscalers tied to enterprise modernization and migration workloads

• Operate cross-functionally alongside product, engineering, GTM, legal, and finance to bring partner motions to life

• Build and eventually scale a team to execute on the partnership strategy you define

What You Bring

• 6–12 years of B2B enterprise SaaS strategic partnerships experience

• Proven ability to build partnerships from scratch at a high-growth startup or top-tier tech company (not just maintain or inherit them)

• Named, verifiable partnerships you personally drove — with measurable revenue, product, or market impact

• Fluency across the full range of partnership types: AI lab relationships, cloud co-sell motions, and product/SDLC integrations

• Strong cross-functional operating skills — you can align product, engineering, and GTM around a shared partner vision

• Ability and willingness to work in-office 5 days/week in San Francisco (SoMa) and travel frequently for partner meetings and events

Key Success Drivers

• 0-to-1 instinct — you're energized by ambiguity and building where nothing existed before

• Executive presence — you operate credibly at the C-suite level with AI labs, cloud providers, and Fortune 500 partners

• Frontier curiosity — you track the AI model landscape closely and see partnership opportunities before they're obvious

• Extreme ownership — you define the roadmap, you drive it, you own the outcomes

• Speed without sacrificing depth — you make fast, high-quality decisions and build durable relationships simultaneously

• Startup metabolism — you thrive in fast-moving environments and don't need a large team or established playbook to produce results

Why Join?

• Rocketship trajectory — $0 to $100M ARR in 12 months; growth continues at a rate few companies ever achieve

• $150M Series C — well-capitalized to accelerate partnerships, product, and go-to-market at scale

• Elite enterprise customers — trusted by industry leaders including Nvidia, Adobe, and Ernst & Young

• $220K–$300K base salary plus meaningful equity; relocation support and visa sponsorship available for the right candidate

• Define your career — the team lives and breathes AI-native work; you'll use the product yourself and uplevel how partnership work gets done

• Direct founder access — small team, high trust, massive scope

• Fully covered benefits — medical, dental, and vision insurance at 100% employer cost

• 401(k) + FSA — retirement and flexible savings from day one

• On-site perks — daily catered lunches and dinners, on-site gym, and desk setup stipend

Interview Process

• HR Screen

• Interview with the Hiring Manager

• Interview with an Advisor

• On-site (Case study)

• Offer

We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran or military status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by law.