Head of Business Development

Source Inc.; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Source is seeking a former engineer who has transitioned into business development to lead the full sales lifecycle for edge-native data technology. You will own conversations with engineers and executives, craft partnerships with hardware makers and platform vendors, and shape how our open-source infrastructure is commercialized.

This role is based in the SF Bay Area with equity opportunities. You will collaborate directly with the founders to determine target customers, navigate technical

Qualifications

• Shipped production software as an engineer and moved into BD/sales/partnerships.
• Experience selling into engineering organizations and understanding technical buyers.
• Comfort reading code, architecture reviews, and discussing CRDTs, sync costs, and edge considerations.

Responsibilities

• Own the full pipeline from initial conversation to signed contract and expansion.
• Forge partnerships with hardware makers, platform vendors, and systems integrators for edge deployments.
• Manage design-partner relationships and convert production usage into references.
• Define commercial structures, pricing, and managed services packaging.

Skills

Production software

Open-source infra

Engineer-to-BD transition

Job description

AI is leaving the cloud. Within a few years, two-thirds of the world's data will be created and processed outside it — because agents now run where the work actually happens: on phones, in vehicles, on robots, drones, and satellites, and they can't wait on a data center to think. Data is the lifeblood of the agentic edge. We're the veins.Source builds the data layer that makes this possible: open-source infrastructure that lets agents store, sync, and trust data anywhere, with or without a connection. We deploy it in production for partners operating in places the cloud can't reach — and we're just getting started.We're a small team that ships. No layers, no theater, no waiting for permission. If you want your work to end up on hardware orbiting the planet, you'll like it here.

Location: SF/Bay Area, NA

Salary: Competitive + equity

Why we are hiring this role

DefraDB, our edge-native database, is open source and in production. Partners are deploying real workloads on it today.

The stack is ready for more of them. What we don't have is someone whose whole job is finding the teams building edge-first products, understanding what they're trying to ship, and getting Source into it.

Until now, that's been the founders. This hire takes it over.

Why this role matters

You'll own every commercial conversation at Source: sales, partnerships, design-partner engagements, managed services deals. You'll work directly with the founders to decide who we go after, what we offer them, and what we say no to.

Many of the buyers are engineers — CTOs, infrastructure leads, founders putting compute on hardware that doesn't forgive mistakes. They'll ask how CRDT merges behave under partition, what sync costs on a constrained link, and how verifiability actually works. Others are heads of innovation or business owners who need the technology mapped to what it does for them. You have to work both rooms: go deep with the engineers without an SE beside you, and make the same technology land with someone who will never read the docs. They don't want a deck either way. They want someone who can look at what they're building and tell them where Source fits, and where it doesn't.

That's why this role is for a former engineer. You need to hold the technical conversation with the technical buyer, and you need to know the product deeply enough to explain it simply to the one who isn't.

What you'll own

• The full pipeline, from first conversation to signed contract to expansion. DevRel and growth surface leads — you qualify them, run the deals, and close them. No SDR team.
• Partnerships with hardware makers, platform vendors, and systems integrators building for the edge.
• Design-partner relationships. Pick the right early customers, run the engagement, and turn their production usage into the reference for the next ten.
• Commercial structure: pricing, contracts, and how managed services get packaged. Built with the founders, not inherited.
• The feedback loop into product and engineering. What blocked a deal is roadmap input.
• Hiring the BD team, once there's enough pipeline to justify one.

Requirements for the role

• Shipped production software as an engineer before moving into BD, sales, or partnerships. Backend, infrastructure, distributed systems, or embedded is ideal.
• Closed technical infrastructure deals at an early-stage company. You found the buyer, ran the deal, and signed it.
• Comfortable in the details. You can read a codebase, follow an architecture review, and answer hard questions about consistency, sync, and data at the edge.
• You've sold into engineering orgs and know the difference between a champion and a decision-maker.
• Experience commercializing open-source or developer infrastructure is a strong plus.
• Based in the Bay Area, NYC, or another NA tech hub, and willing to travel to customers and partners.

This is not a fit if

• You've only ever sold with a sales engineer beside you.
• You need a marketing-qualified pipeline handed to you.
• You want to lead a team on day one. There is no team yet.
• You're more comfortable with the pitch than the product.
• You're looking for a mature product with settled pricing. Some of that is yours to build.

Small team. Real deployments on real hardware. A founding commercial role with the founders in the room and no layer between you and the technology.

If you left engineering because you wanted to be closer to where the technology meets the world, and you still miss talking to engineers, this is that job.