Strategic Deals Lead

Generalist; San Mateo, San Francisco (CA, CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Generalist is seeking a Strategic Deals Lead to own structuring, negotiation, and expansion of its most important commercial relationships. This role covers emerging technologies, data-use rights, IP, and deployment considerations, interfacing with executive leadership to craft durable, scalable agreements.

You will work closely with Applied AI & Partnerships to translate product, model, data, and deployment requirements into deal structures, while guiding renewals and expansions across

Qualifications

• Track record structuring, negotiating, and closing complex tech transactions or strategic partnerships.
• Experience with novel technologies, non-standard commercial structures, or IP/data considerations.
• Strong commercial judgment distinguishing critical issues from negotiable ones.
• Ability to translate engineering and product concepts into commercial requirements.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for senior leadership decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own strategic deal ownership from initial terms through definitive agreements, renewals, and expansions.
• Develop creative commercial structures for emerging technologies and business models.
• Lead negotiations and work with legal counsel on complex issues, including data rights and IP.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate tech needs into deal commitments.
• Drive renewals and expansion opportunities to deepen long-term value.
• Synthesize transaction learnings into reusable negotiation positions and strategic playbooks.

Skills

Strategic deals

Negotiation

Contract terms

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

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.

Generalist is looking for a Strategic Deals Lead to own the structuring, negotiation, and expansion of our most important commercial and strategic relationships.

As we bring frontier robotics technology into the real world, many of our partnerships do not fit neatly into standard software or commercial agreements. They involve new technologies, evolving business models, complex technical and legal considerations, and counterparties ranging from large global enterprises to robotics and technology partners.

You will be part of our Applied AI & Partnerships team, working closely with technical and executive leadership to turn strategic relationships into durable, scalable commercial agreements. You should be equally comfortable designing a creative deal structure, negotiating with a senior business executive, working through a difficult contractual issue, and getting deep enough into our technology to understand what the agreement needs to protect and enable.

Responsibilities

• Strategic deal ownership: Own the structuring, negotiation, and closing of Generalist’s most complex and strategically important commercial transactions and partnerships, from initial terms through definitive agreements, renewals, and expansions.
• Commercial structuring: Develop creative deal structures for emerging technologies and business models, balancing strategic value, economics, technical feasibility, customer needs, and long-term company interests.
• Negotiation & legal terms: Lead commercial negotiations and partner closely with legal counsel on complex contractual issues, including training data and data-use rights, model and fine-tune rights, intellectual property, exclusivity, deployment, and other emerging AI and robotics concepts.
• Technical & cross-functional partnership: Work closely with Applied AI & Partnerships, company leadership, and technical teams to understand the technology and translate product, model, data, and deployment requirements into appropriate deal structures and commitments.
• Renewals & expansion: Drive the commercial strategy for major partnership renewals and expansions, identifying opportunities to deepen relationships and increase their long-term value.
• Deal strategy & playbooks: Synthesize learnings from transactions into clear recommendations for leadership, including reusable negotiation positions, deal frameworks, market intelligence, and implications for future commercial strategy.

Minimum Qualifications

• Demonstrated track record of independently structuring, negotiating, and closing complex, high-value technology transactions or strategic partnerships.
• Significant experience negotiating agreements involving novel technologies, non-standard commercial structures, or complex intellectual property and data considerations.
• Strong commercial judgment and the ability to distinguish between issues that are strategically critical and those where creative compromise is possible.
• Ability to understand sophisticated legal concepts, work closely with technical teams and translate complex engineering and product concepts into commercial structures, contractual requirements, and strategic recommendations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to distill complex negotiations into clear decisions and recommendations for senior leadership.
• Ability to operate effectively under pressure, build alignment among stakeholders with competing objectives, and know when to challenge, elevate, develop alternatives, or close.
• Comfort operating in a fast-changing environment where priorities, processes, and responsibilities may sometimes be ambiguous and evolve quickly.

Preferred Qualifications

• 8–10+ years of experience in strategic deals, corporate development, strategic partnerships, business development, technology transactions, or a related field, with meaningful direct transactional ownership.
• Experience negotiating transactions involving AI, machine learning, robotics, enterprise software, data licensing, intellectual property, or other technically complex products.
• Experience owning renewals and expansions of large strategic or enterprise. relationships.
• Experience working in an environment where the product, business model, and market structure are still evolving.
• JD preferred.
• Experience managing multiple high-value transactions simultaneously at different stages of maturity and commercial development.