Business Development Lead
Note: We are recruiting on behalf of our valued client. This opportunity is for a position with their organization, not with People Culture Talent. We're excited to help connect talented professionals with this exceptional team!
The Role
A leading open AI evaluation platform redefining how the world’s most advanced AI labs measure model performance is seeking a Senior Business Development Lead to drive strategic revenue growth and enterprise partnerships.
This is a senior individual contributor role designed for a highly autonomous closer who thrives in complex technical sales environments. You will own the full lifecycle of revenue generation—from cultivating relationships with research and engineering stakeholders to structuring and closing large-scale partnerships.
In this role, you will work directly with the world’s most advanced AI labs and select enterprise organizations, embedding the platform’s evaluation infrastructure into critical AI development workflows. Your success will be measured by your ability to expand strategic relationships, secure long-term contracts, and ensure the organization meets and exceeds its annual revenue and consumption targets.
What You’ll Own
Strategic Account Growth & Execution
Serve as the primary business lead for top global model labs, managing relationships across research, engineering, and procurement stakeholders
Expand revenue across multiple evaluation modalities (text, code, vision, multimodal, auto-eval) by aligning evaluation programs with customer training and research roadmaps
Identify and close strategic enterprise opportunities with organizations seeking to evaluate internal or third-party AI models (e.g., large technology and enterprise software companies)
Negotiate co-release and marketing rights within major partnerships to strengthen the platform’s market presence and industry mindshare
Own the full lifecycle of customer relationships, including renewals, expansions, and upsells, while maintaining forward visibility into multi-quarter revenue commitments
Forecasting, Deal Structuring & Revenue Strategy
Maintain rigorous pipeline management and revenue forecasting aligned with delivery schedules, consumption pacing, and renewal cycles
Structure complex enterprise deals that balance predictable contracted revenue with flexible usage-based pricing models
Partner with product, delivery, and finance teams to ensure evaluation capacity, quality, and delivery timelines meet customer expectations
Support go-to-market strategy for new evaluation and data products, driving adoption across both existing accounts and new strategic relationships
What You’ll Bring
10+ years of experience in business development, enterprise sales, or strategic partnerships, ideally selling technical infrastructure, data platforms, or developer-facing products
Demonstrated success as a top-performing individual contributor closing complex enterprise deals, including seven-figure contracts
Experience navigating large organizational procurement processes and negotiating sophisticated commercial agreements
Strong AI industry fluency, including familiarity with concepts such as model training vs. inference, RLHF, and benchmarking, with the ability to communicate credibly with research and engineering stakeholders
High levels of ownership and autonomy, with the ability to independently manage pipeline development, deal execution, and forecasting
Strong operational discipline, ensuring that commercial commitments align with product delivery capabilities and organizational priorities
Compensation Band
Their openings span more than one career level. The starting salary for this role is $180k and could range up to $250k USD, plus equity. Variable compensation would be in addition to the base salary. The provided salary depends on many factors, such as work experience and transferable skills, business needs and impact, and market demands.
Benefits
Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and additional support programs.
The opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI with a small, mission-driven team.
A culture that values transparency, trust, and community impact.
Visa sponsorship available.
About Our Client:
This fast-growing startup is redefining what "better" means in AI. Built by researchers from UC Berkeley's SkyLab and backed by Felicis, Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, and the University of California, this open evaluation platform has become the definitive source for understanding how AI models actually perform in the real world.
With over a million daily users and the trust of every major AI lab — including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic — their crowdsourced benchmarks and human preference data power the decisions shaping the future of artificial intelligence. Their leaderboards aren't just influential; they're the industry standard.
Behind the platform is a team of researchers, engineers, and builders from UC Berkeley, Google, Stanford, DeepMind, and beyond — people who seek truth, move fast, and care deeply about craftsmanship and impact. They're building a company where deep expertise meets curiosity, and where the work genuinely matters.