Senior Director - EMEA Startup & VC Business Development

Coreweaveu; Greater London; On-site; GBP 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Living Wage accreditation

Job summary

CoreWeave is seeking a Senior Director, Startup Business Development – EMEA to lead the regional startup ecosystem strategy, build key partnerships, and drive adoption of AI infrastructure across the UK, Europe and Israel. You will partner with sales, product and engineering to convert opportunities, hire and mentor a regional team, and define programmes that accelerate startup and VC engagement.

Based in the UK with regular travel across EMEA, you will shape the startup go-to-market, establish

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in business development, sales, partnerships, startup go-to-market or venture ecosystem leadership within cloud infrastructure, enterprise technology, AI.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute CoreWeave’s EMEA startup business development strategy, operating plan and investment priorities.
• Build a systematic view of the regional startup opportunity, identifying markets, investor portfolios, technology categories and companies most likely to become significant consumers of AI infrastructure.
• Establish clear criteria for prioritising startups based on technical ambition, compute intensity, funding trajectory, workload timing, leadership quality and strategic value.
• Build senior relationships with venture capital firms, seed and growth investors, accelerators, universities, research laboratories and founder communities.
• Develop strategic engagement plans for priority ecosystem organisations and create repeatable mechanisms for portfolio introductions, founder support, technical engagement and market intelligence.
• Position CoreWeave as the preferred AI infrastructure and developer platform for companies with meaningful training, fine‑tuning, inference and applied‑intelligence requirements.
• Engage founders, CTOs, researchers and investors before infrastructure architectures and platform relationships are firmly established.
• Create qualified opportunities and introductions for country Startup and Digital Native field teams, connecting high‑potential companies rapidly to the right sellers, technical resources and executive sponsors.
• Partner with country sales leaders to define target companies, ecosystem priorities and engagement strategies while maintaining clear account ownership.
• Coordinate strategically important opportunities across Sales, Field Engineering, Product, Engineering, Capacity, Finance, Legal, Marketing and Customer Success.
• Establish clear programme eligibility, investment and graduation criteria, ensuring activity is focused on durable platform adoption and commercial potential.
• Act as the regional voice of the startup ecosystem inside CoreWeave, translating market insight into recommendations for Product, Engineering, Capacity, Marketing and commercial leadership.
• Build, lead and develop a high-performing EMEA Startup Business Development team with complementary programme and geographic coverage.
• Establish a rigorous operating cadence and scorecard covering ecosystem coverage, target‑company engagement, field acceptance, sourced and influenced pipeline, technical activation, consumption and downstream commercial impact.

Skills

EMEA market leadership

Startup ecosystem partnerships

Cloud infrastructure knowledge

Strategic account development

Team leadership

Job description

CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI labs, startups, and global enterprises, CoreWeave combines superior infrastructure performance with deep technical expertise to accelerate breakthroughs and turn compute into capability. Founded in 2017, CoreWeave became a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: CRWV) in March 2025. Learn more at www.coreweave.com.

We're proud to be a Living Wage accredited Employer.

What You'll Do

The EMEA Startup Business Development organisation will help make CoreWeave the preferred platform for the next generation of AI-native companies. The team will build relationships and programmes across the institutions that create, fund and accelerate startups, then convert that ecosystem position into qualified opportunities and practical advantage for CoreWeave’s country field teams.

About the Role

The Senior Director, Startup Business Development – EMEA will report to the Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA and lead the development of CoreWeave’s startup and venture capital business across the region.

This is a business development overlay role. Country sales teams will retain account ownership, opportunity management and revenue responsibility across the Startup, Digital Native and Enterprise segments. You will build the relationships, propositions, programmes, market intelligence and operating mechanisms that help those teams identify the right companies earlier, engage them before platform decisions are established and win them onto CoreWeave.

You will build and lead a team spanning priority geographies and regional programmes. Initial focus will include the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Nordics, Benelux and Israel.

In This Role, You Will

• Define and execute CoreWeave’s EMEA startup business development strategy, operating plan and investment priorities.
• Build a systematic view of the regional startup opportunity, identifying the markets, investor portfolios, technology categories and companies most likely to become significant consumers of AI infrastructure.
• Establish clear criteria for prioritising startups based on technical ambition, compute intensity, funding trajectory, workload timing, leadership quality and strategic value.
• Build senior relationships with venture capital firms, seed and growth investors, accelerators, universities, research laboratories and founder communities.
• Develop strategic engagement plans for priority ecosystem organisations and create repeatable mechanisms for portfolio introductions, founder support, technical engagement and market intelligence.
• Position CoreWeave as the preferred AI infrastructure and developer platform for companies with meaningful training, fine‑tuning, inference and applied‑intelligence requirements.
• Engage founders, CTOs, researchers and investors before infrastructure architectures and platform relationships are firmly established.
• Create qualified opportunities and introductions for country Startup and Digital Native field teams, connecting high‑potential companies rapidly to the right sellers, technical resources and executive sponsors.
• Partner with country sales leaders to define target companies, ecosystem priorities and engagement strategies while maintaining clear account ownership.
• Coordinate strategically important opportunities across Sales, Field Engineering, Product, Engineering, Capacity, Finance, Legal, Marketing and Customer Success.
• Establish clear programme eligibility, investment and graduation criteria, ensuring activity is focused on durable platform adoption and commercial potential.
• Act as the regional voice of the startup ecosystem inside CoreWeave, translating market insight into recommendations for Product, Engineering, Capacity, Marketing and commercial leadership.
• Build, lead and develop a high-performing EMEA Startup Business Development team with complementary programme and geographic coverage.
• Establish a rigorous operating cadence and scorecard covering ecosystem coverage, target‑company engagement, field acceptance, sourced and influenced pipeline, technical activation, consumption and downstream commercial impact.

Objectives

During the first 12 months, you will:

• Define the EMEA startup business development strategy, operating plan and investment priorities.
• Develop and launch CoreWeave’s proposition for AI startups at different stages of formation and growth.
• Design and launch the initial portfolio of regional startup and venture ecosystem programmes.
• Define the organisation, hire the initial team and establish coverage across priority programmes and geographies.
• Identify, segment and onboard the venture capital firms, accelerators, universities and research organisations most relevant to CoreWeave.
• Establish senior relationships and strategic engagement plans with priority ecosystem partners.
• Create mechanisms for portfolio introductions, technical engagement, founder support and joint planning.
• Build and maintain a prioritised target list of high‑potential AI startups and research spinouts.
• Map priority investor portfolios against CoreWeave’s ideal startup profile and connect qualified companies to the appropriate country sales teams.
• Establish clear ways of working with country field sales teams, including qualification, routing, account assignment, handoff, executive sponsorship and attribution.
• Establish effective operating mechanisms with Product, Engineering, Field Engineering, Marketing, Capacity, Finance, Legal and other supporting groups.
• Implement the business review cadence, measurement framework and attribution model required to assess ecosystem and field impact.

Who You Are

• 15+ years of experience in business development, sales, partnerships, startup go‑to‑market or venture ecosystem leadership within cloud infrastructure, enterprise technology, AI or another complex technology environment.
• Significant leadership experience building and operating startup, venture capital or ecosystem programmes across multiple EMEA markets.
• A proven record of converting ecosystem relationships into qualified opportunities, technical adoption, pipeline, consumption and commercial growth.
• Demonstrated experience developing senior relationships with venture capital firms, accelerators, universities, research organisations, founders, CTOs and technology executives.
• Experience working with country sales organisations to create demand and accelerate customer acquisition without displacing account ownership.
• Strong understanding of the startup lifecycle, from formation and seed funding through venture growth and scaled commercial operation.
• Experience identifying promising companies early and assessing their technical ambition, infrastructure needs, funding trajectory and long‑term potential.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, AI platforms, developer tooling and the requirements of AI‑native companies.
• Demonstrated ability to build structured programmes, operating mechanisms and performance measures that scale beyond personal relationships.
• Experience aligning Sales, Field Engineering, Product, Marketing, Finance, Legal and executive stakeholders around shared opportunities.
• Strong analytical and operational capability, including market segmentation, portfolio analysis, opportunity attribution and executive business reviews.
• Experience building, hiring, coaching and developing high‑performing business development or ecosystem teams.
• A record of operating successfully across EMEA markets and cultures, with the ability to travel regularly.

Preferred

• Leadership experience within the startup organisation of a major hyperscale cloud provider, AI platform company or global infrastructure technology business.
• Direct experience building or scaling a regional startup business measured through customer acquisition, workload adoption, consumption and revenue.
• Experience designing the operating model between a regional startup business development organisation and country‑based sales teams.
• Established senior relationships across the EMEA venture capital and AI startup ecosystem.
• Experience working with compute‑intensive AI companies across training, fine‑tuning, inference, applied AI or AI platform development.