Business Development & Strategy Lead - AI Infrastructure
About Emerald AI
We’re at a pivotal moment for AI and energy. Demand for compute is skyrocketing, but power constraints are becoming a critical bottleneck. Emerald AI sits at the intersection of these two worlds, enabling AI data centers to scale without overwhelming the grid.
Our Emerald Conductor software platform makes data centers flexible and responsive, allowing them to adjust power usage dynamically. This unlocks massive AI growth without major new infrastructure, while also strengthening the grid and supporting the expansion of renewable energy.
We’re a team of experts across AI, cloud, software, and energy—on a mission to scale AI sustainably. We’re backed by leading investors and partners including Radical Ventures and NVIDIA.
Learn more about our vision, team, and backers at https://www.emeraldai.co/.
About the Role
We are seeking a Business Development & Strategy Lead - AI Infrastructure to define and execute Emerald AI’s commercial strategy with a strong focus on AI compute buyers and infrastructure partners.
This role is squarely oriented toward the tech, cloud, and infrastructure ecosystem: AI labs and startups, hyperscalers, GPU cloud providers, colocation operators, and emerging compute platforms that need flexible, power-aware solutions to deploy capacity faster. This person will be responsible for deeply understanding how AI workloads are provisioned, scheduled, and monetized today and translating that understanding into adoption of Emerald’s power-flexible infrastructure platform.
You will own early go-to-market motion from identifying high-value AI compute use cases, to shaping commercial pilots, to building strategic partnerships across the cloud and data center stack. You will work closely with product and engineering to ensure our roadmap directly reflects how AI compute customers buy, deploy, and scale infrastructure today.
This is a hands-on, 0 to 1 role with significant influence over strategy, positioning, and early revenue.
Key Responsibilities
Shape Emerald AI’s commercial strategy with a focus on AI compute customers, cloud platforms, and infrastructure operators.
Drive conversations from technical discovery through pilots, PoC’s, and early deployments.
Work with customers on deployment models that align power flexibility, workload characteristics, and commercial outcomes.
Develop partnerships with hyperscalers, GPU vendors, colocation providers, and infrastructure platforms.
Track trends in AI compute demand, GPU supply, interconnection timelines, and data center deployment models.
Work closely with product and engineering to shape requirements, deployment models, and technical messaging.
Help bridge conversations between technical buyers (infra, platform, data center ops) and business stakeholders.
Minimum requirements
5+ years experience in technology-focused business development, strategy, or partnerships.
10+ years total professional experience, with exposure to high-growth technology companies or startups.
Demonstrated experience selling or partnering into cloud platforms, AI infrastructure, or data center environments.
Strong understanding of AI compute systems, including how GPU capacity is provisioned (on-demand vs reserved), how workloads are scheduled and orchestrated (training vs inference), and how performance, cost, and reliability tradeoffs are managed in production environments.
Experience navigating complex, multi-stakeholder technical buying processes.
Ability to operate with ambiguity, synthesize technical and market signals, and execute quickly.
Excellent communication skills with both technical and executive audiences.
Preferred requirements
Experience with power-constrained infrastructure, grid interconnection, or energy-aware compute.
Prior work with hyperscalers, GPU cloud providers, or large-scale AI platforms.
What We Offer
Make an impact. Solve the AI power bottleneck and shape how data centers scale sustainably.
Join a world-class team of AI, cloud, software, and energy experts in a collaborative, low-ego environment.
Build from 0→1. Influence strategy, GTM, org design, and customer/investor engagement from day one.
Competitive pay + equity. Stock options let you share in the value you help create.
Comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) matching.
Flexible location. Work from D.C., Boston, or the Bay Area
Backed by top investors, including Radical Ventures and NVIDIA.
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, and any other protected ground of discrimination under applicable human rights legislation.
Emerald AI strives to respect the dignity and independence of people with disabilities and is committed to giving them the same opportunity to succeed as all other employees.
Inclusiveness is core to our culture at Emerald AI, and we strive to ensure you get the most from your interview experience. Emerald AI makes reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please reach out to the Talent team.