Partnerships Lead

Generalist; Somerville (MA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Generalist seeks a senior Partnerships lead to own and deepen relationships with strategic partners in a fast-paced AI/ robotics environment.

You will coordinate with ML/engineering, product, Partnerships, and leadership to drive joint initiatives, translate learnings into product actions, and communicate progress to executives. The role requires 5–7 years of cross-functional leadership, exceptional communication, ownership, and adaptability.

Qualifications

• 5-7 years of professional experience in partnerships, business development, product/program leadership, or related high-ownership roles.
• Ability to independently own external relationships and lead cross-functional initiatives.
• Excellent organizational, written, and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Partner ownership: manage and deepen relationships with key partners.
• Partnership development: evaluate opportunities and translate into concrete steps.
• Technical fluency: become a super user of Generalist's models and tech.
• Program leadership: drive initiatives end-to-end with milestones.
• Executive communication: present clear updates and decisions to stakeholders.
• Cross-functional coordination: align ML/engineering, product, Partnerships, and leadership.
• Travel: represent Generalist at events and conferences.

Skills

Partner relationships

Cross-functional leadership

Executive communication

Project management

Strategic thinking

Fast-paced adaptability

Relationship building

Job description

About Generalist

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.