Member of Strategic Staff, Model Ecosystem

Runway; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Runway is seeking an experienced Partnerships professional to source, activate and scale model partners across modalities. You will own the relationship from initial conversations through launch, collaborating with Engineering, Legal, Finance and Marketing to deliver integrated solutions.

You will evaluate labs and new models, structure commercial terms, and drive joint launches while managing multiple partners in a fast-paced environment from cities across the US.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience across partnerships, business development, GTM, consulting, or founding/operating, with a track record of owning outcomes end to end.
• Experience negotiating commercial agreements, ideally usage-based, API or platform deals.
• Genuine obsession with generative AI, labs, and hands-on model evaluation.

Responsibilities

• Own a broad portfolio of model partners end to end, across modalities.
• Track the model landscape relentlessly and bring strong candidates to the team.
• Take new partners from zero to launched: source, structure and negotiate commercial terms, then close with Legal and Finance.
• Be the partner's main point of contact through launch, working closely with our engineering team.
• Build deep, trusted relationships with founders, BD leads and research teams, turning relationships into early access and joint launches.
• Run the portfolio with rigor: set check-in cadences, monitor relationship health, and escalate risk early.
• Track usage, spend and margin by partner and model to guide investment and renegotiation decisions.
• Partner with Marketing on co-marketing for model launches.

Skills

Partnerships

Business development

GTM

Negotiation

Job description

We are building AI to simulate the world through merging art and science.

We believe that world models are at the frontier of progress in artificial intelligence. Language models alone won't solve the world's hardest problems - robotics, disease, scientific discovery. Real progress requires models that experience the world and learn from their mistakes, the same way that humans do. And this kind of trial and error can be massively accelerated when done in simulation, rather than in the real world.

World models offer the most clear path to general‑purpose simulation, changing how stories are told, how scientific progress is made and how the next frontiers of humanity are reached.

Our team consists of creative, open minded, caring and ambitious people who are determined to change the world. We aspire to continuously build impossible things and our ability to do so relies on building an incredible team. If you are driven to do the same, we'd love to hear from you.

About the role

• Open to hiring remote across the US - we also have offices in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Paris, and Tel Aviv.

Runway is rapidly building the leading ecosystem of generative models, bringing the best models from AI labs around the world to our users alongside our own. We are looking for an IC to source, activate, and scale relationships across Runway's growing portfolio of model partners. This is a role for someone who wants to own whatever needs owning, take new models from first conversation to launch, and write the playbook where none exists yet. You will work closely across Engineering, Product, Legal, Finance, and Marketing.

What you'll do

• Own a broad portfolio of model partners end to end, across modalities
• Track the model landscape relentlessly: spot new labs and releases early and bring the strongest ones to the team as candidates for integration
• Take new partners from zero to launched: source, structure and negotiate commercial terms, then close with Legal and Finance
• Be the partner's main point of contact through launch, working closely with our engineering team
• Build deep, trusted relationships with founders, BD leads and research teams at our partners, and turn those relationships into early access, better terms and joint launches
• Run the portfolio with rigor: set check‑in cadences, monitor relationship health, and spot and escalate risk early
• Track usage, spend and margin by partner and model, and use that data to decide where to invest, renegotiate or step back
• Partner with Marketing and our partners on co‑marketing for model launches
• Build the frameworks and tools that let the function scale as the ecosystem grows

What you'll need

• 5+ years of experience across some combination of partnerships, business development, GTM, consulting, or founding/operating, with a track record of having owned outcomes end to end
• Experience negotiating commercial agreements, ideally usage‑based, API or platform deals
• Genuine obsession with generative AI: you know the labs, you try new models the day they ship, and you have opinions on what makes one good
• Demonstrated range: you've done the deal and the integration and the launch
• High technical aptitude for understanding complex technologies, tools, systems, and issues
• Strong analytical capabilities, with the ability to turn usage and spend data into a clear recommendation
• Ability to manage many relationships and priorities at once in a fast‑paced environment without dropping threads
• Clear, concise communication, from a startup founder to a big‑lab partnerships team to a Runway engineer in the same day
• A strong bias towards action and belief that no task is too small for you
• Highly resourceful, with the ability to create structure and work autonomously amid ambiguity
• New York‑based preferred

Runway strives to recruit and retain exceptional talent from diverse backgrounds while ensuring pay equity for our team. Our salary ranges are based on competitive market rates for our size, stage and industry, and salary is just one part of the overall compensation package we provide.

There are many factors that go into salary determinations, including relevant experience, skill level and qualifications assessed during the interview process, and maintaining internal equity with peers on the team. The range shared below is a general expectation for the function as posted, but we are also open to considering candidates who may be more or less experienced than outlined in the job description. In this case, we will communicate any updates in the expected salary range.

Lastly, the provided range is the expected salary for candidates in the U.S. Outside of those regions, there may be a change in the range, which again, will be communicated to candidates.

Working at Runway

Great things come from great teams. We'd love to hear from you.

We're committed to creating a space where our employees can bring their full selves to work and have equal opportunity to succeed. So re