Partnerships Lead

Generalist AI, Inc.; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Generalist AI, Inc. seeks a seasoned partnerships professional to own and deepen relationships with leading partners while driving strategic opportunities across product, research, and business teams.

You will engage with senior stakeholders, translate partner needs into actionable plans, and lead cross‑functional programs that push Generalist’s models and platforms forward. Occasional travel to industry events is expected.

Qualifications

• 5–7 years of professional experience in partnerships, business development, or strategy roles.
• Proven ability to independently own external relationships and lead cross‑functional initiatives.
• Outstanding organizational and project management skills with multiple workstreams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, able to explain technical concepts clearly.

Responsibilities

• Partner ownership: Manage and deepen relationships with key partners.
• Partnership development: Assess opportunities and translate into concrete actions.
• Technical fluency: Become proficient with Generalist’s models and tech for credible partner engagement.
• Program leadership: Guide multi‑team initiatives from plan to milestones.
• Executive communication: Deliver clear updates and recommendations to leadership.
• Cross‑functional coordination: Align ML/engineering, product, and partnerships teams.
• Travel: Represent Generalist at industry events as needed.

Skills

Partnerships

Strategic thinking

Executive presence

Cross-functional

Project management

Technical fluency

Job description

At Generalist, we are on a mission to build general intelligence for the physical world and make it useful to everyone. We believe the industries and homes of the future will depend on humans and machines working together in new ways. Robots can help us build more and get more done.

We build embodied foundation models, starting with a focus on dexterity. This requires advancing the frontiers of data, models, and hardware, to enable robots to intelligently interact with the physical world.

The company embraces both large-scale AI and robotics as core to its DNA. Our team of researchers, roboticists, and company builders come from OpenAI, Boston Dynamics, Google DeepMind, and other frontier labs—with a track record of shipping AI breakthroughs. Before Generalist, we pioneered large embodied multimodal models and vision-language-action models (PaLM-E, RT-2 , Gemini Robotics ), launched and scaled ChatGPT and GPT-4 to hundreds of millions of users, engineered the foundations of autonomous driving, built next-generation robots ( Atlas , Spot , Stretch ) and pushed the limits of what they can do (from parkour to manipulation , and testing robustness ).

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Responsibilities

Partner ownership: Own and deepen relationships with a small number of Generalist’s most important partners, building trusted relationships across technical, operational, and executive stakeholders.

Partnership development: Evaluate partnership opportunities for both new and current partners, including understanding priorities, identifying opportunities for collaboration, and translating into concrete next steps.

Technical fluency: Become a super user of Generalist’s models and technology, developing the technical depth to explain complex concepts clearly, engage credibly with partner teams, identify compelling applications, and help partners get the most out of our technology.

Program leadership: Drive complex partner initiatives end-to-end, aligning stakeholders across organizations, defining workplans and milestones, resolving blockers, and maintaining momentum across multiple workstreams.

Executive communication: Communicate clearly and credibly with senior internal and external stakeholders, synthesizing technical and business topics into crisp updates, recommendations, decisions, and next steps.

Cross-functional coordination: Work closely with ML/engineering, product, Partnerships, and leadership to represent partner needs internally, coordinate decisions, and translate external learnings into product, model, and company action.

Travel: Represent Generalist with partners and at relevant industry events and conferences as needed.

Minimum Qualifications

5–7 years of professional experience in partnerships, business development, product/program leadership, strategy & operations, technology, or another high-ownership environment.

Demonstrated ability to independently own important external relationships and complex cross-functional initiatives with minimal oversight.

Exceptional organizational and project management skills; able to manage multiple high-stakes workstreams, stakeholders, decisions, and timelines simultaneously.

Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to understand complex technical concepts and explain them clearly and compellingly to different audiences.

Strong technical curiosity and demonstrated ability to quickly develop fluency in complex products or technologies.

Strong judgment and ability to understand partner needs, identify the highest-value opportunities, navigate ambiguity, and make thoughtful recommendations.

Strong interpersonal skills and executive presence; able to build trust with stakeholders across different levels and functions within large organizations.

High ownership, integrity, responsiveness, reliability, and consistent follow-through.

Comfort operating in a fast-changing environment where priorities, processes, and responsibilities may sometimes be ambiguous and evolve quickly.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience working in AI/ML, robotics, developer platforms, enterprise technology, or another complex technical environment.

Experience owning major customer or partner relationships over multiple years and expanding those relationships over time, including working directly with senior executives and navigating complex enterprise organizations.

Experience leading technical programs or deployments involving multiple internal and external teams.

Experience working in an early- or growth-stage technology company where roles and processes are still evolving.