Senior Associate, Corporate Development

Sonar; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Sonar is seeking a Senior Associate for Corporate Development to shape the company's growth strategy. The role will focus on M&A, strategic investments, and pipeline management.

Ideal candidates will have 2+ years in venture capital or investment banking, strong analytical skills, and experience in the tech sector. Opportunities include building relationships with stakeholders and contributing to Sonar's strategy in the AI coding industry.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of full-time experience in venture capital, growth equity, investment banking, or corporate development.
• Experience with full deal lifecycle: sourcing, diligence, modeling, and transaction execution.
• Strong interest in developer tools and AI coding.

Responsibilities

• Conduct outbound sourcing and market mapping across AI coding and developer tools.
• Own and maintain Sonar's corporate development pipeline.
• Build relationships with stakeholders to generate deal flow.

Skills

Financial modeling

Analytical fundamentals

Communication skills

Interpersonal skills

Project management

Education

Bachelor's degree in finance, economics, business, computer science, or engineering

Tools

CRM systems

Job description

Who is Sonar?

Sonar is driving the future of agent-centric software development. As the leader in AI code review and verification, we solve a critical problem: ensuring that software generated by AI-assisted developers or autonomous agents is reliable, secure, and maintainable.

Integrating seamlessly with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini, and Devin, we help over 75% of the Fortune 100 build trusted, reliable, compliant software. Customers who use Sonar are 44% less likely to report an outage due to AI-generated code.

We believe code verification is the critical missing link in the Agent-Centric Development Cycle (AC/DC). Industry giants like Nvidia, ServiceNow, Booking.com, Goldman Sachs, AstraZeneca, and Ford Motor Company count on us to provide independent, explainable, consistent review and governance of their AI-generated code via products like:

• SonarQube: The world’s leading AI code review and verification platform.
• SonarQube Foundation Agent: Currently topping the leaderboards for agentic software repair.
• SonarSweep & Sonar Context Augmentation: Providing the enterprise-grade context and constraints agents need to be truly effective.

Our team operates across global hubs in Austin, Bochum, Dubai, Geneva, London, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. We move with a mindset we call CODE:

• Committed to our customers and community.
• Obsessed with quality.
• Deliberate in our decisions.
• Effective as one team.

With over $400M in revenue and profitable, fast-paced growth, we are building the backbone of the AI software revolution. If you’re hungry to have an impact, want to build at a fast pace, and ready to work at the forefront of AI, we want to hear from you.

Position description

As a Senior Associate, Corporate Development at Sonar, you will play a foundational role in shaping the company's growth strategy across M&A, strategic investments, and build/partner/buy decisions. Reporting to the VP, Corporate Development, you will be the primary engine for outbound sourcing, market mapping, and triage of M&A opportunities across the AI coding, developer tools, application security, and broader software development lifecycle (SDLC) ecosystem.

You will own day-to-day pipeline management and serve as the connective tissue between Sonar's executive leadership, Product, Engineering, Finance, and Legal teams as we evaluate M&A opportunities. From first outreach through diligence and integration planning, you will help ensure Sonar evaluates the right opportunities, with the right rigor, at the right pace. This is a high-visibility role designed to give an early-career professional from venture capital, investment banking, or corporate development direct operating exposure at one of the most strategically positioned independent software companies in the AI era.

What you will do

• Conduct outbound sourcing and market mapping across AI coding, developer tools, application security, and adjacent SDLC categories — building and continuously refreshing landscapes of public and private companies relevant to Sonar's strategy.
• Triage inbound and outbound opportunities, performing first-pass commercial, product, and technical screens to determine fit, priority, and recommended next steps.
• Own and maintain Sonar's corporate development pipeline (CRM hygiene, target lists, status tracking, weekly reporting), ensuring leadership has a clear, real-time view of activity and progress.
• Build and maintain relationships with founders, operators, bankers, venture investors, and other ecosystem participants to generate proprietary deal flow.
• Engage with internal stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Go-to-Market, Finance, and Legal to gather strategic input, prioritize targets, and align on evaluation criteria.
• Run structured diligence workstreams on prioritized targets, including analysis of key business metrics (ARR growth, net and gross retention, gross margin, profitability/burn, sales efficiency, customer concentration) and product/technical fit.
• Build financial models, valuation analyses (comps, precedent transactions, DCF where appropriate), and synthesis materials to support investment decisions and executive review.
• Prepare crisp, executive-ready memos, dashboards, and board-quality materials that translate complex diligence findings into clear recommendations.
• Support deal execution by coordinating across internal teams, external advisors, and target-side counterparts on data room reviews, Q&A, and process management.
• Partner with cross-functional leaders on integration planning and execution for closed transactions, helping translate deal theses into 30/60/90-day operating plans and tracking integration KPIs post-close.
• Contribute to Sonar's broader corporate strategy work, including market sizing, competitive analyses, and "build vs. partner vs. buy" frameworks for new product and category bets.

Experience and qualifications

• 2+ years of full-time experience in venture capital, growth equity, investment banking (TMT/software coverage or M&A), management consulting (with a tech focus), or in-house corporate development at a high-quality technology company.
• Demonstrated exposure to the full deal lifecycle — sourcing, diligence, modeling, and ideally support on transaction execution and/or post-close integration.
• Strong financial and analytical fundamentals: comfortable building three-statement and operating models, conducting valuation analyses, and rigorously interrogating SaaS/software business metrics (ARR, NRR/GRR, CAC payback, magic number, Rule of 40, gross margin, FCF).
• Genuine interest in and curiosity about the developer tools, AI coding, code security, and broader software/DevOps ecosystem; ability to quickly come up to speed on new product categories and technical concepts.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of producing clear, concise, executive-ready memos and presentations.
• Highly organized, self-directed, and proactive — comfortable owning a pipeline, managing parallel workstreams, and operating with minimal supervision in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
• Strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence; able to build trust quickly with founders, executives, advisors, and internal stakeholders across functions and geographies.
• Sound judgment, intellectual honesty, and a high degree of discretion when handling confidential information.
• Bachelor's degree in finance, economics, business, computer science, engineering, or a related field; strong academic record.

We value diversity, equity, and inclusion

At Sonar, we believe that our diversity is our strength. We are a global company that values and respects different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their best. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and welcome all qualified applicants, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

If you need any accommodation, please reach out to us at [e-mail].

All offers of employment at Sonar are contingent upon the results of a comprehensive background check and reference verification conducted before the start date.

We do not currently support visa candidates in the US.

Applications that are submitted through agencies or third-party recruiters will not be considered.