About the Team The Startup Growth team is building the systems, programs, and automation that enable OpenAI to win startups at scale. We need to make it dramatically faster and easier to turn high-potential growth ideas into repeatable, measurable GTM motions without bespoke infrastructure for every program. About the Role The GTM Growth Programs Lead will own the shared capabilities that enable Startup GTM to incubate, launch, measure, and scale growth programs. The role will initially own credit and commercial programs while using that work to build reusable infrastructure for a broader portfolio of GTM motions. The goal is not to centralize program ownership: teams closest to startups should continue to identify, incubate, and own growth motions. This role will build the operating system that makes them dramatically better and faster at doing so. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Build the GTM program platform for Startups. Develop shared infrastructure, tooling, and agentic systems that turn growth opportunities into scalable programs, automate work across the program lifecycle, and make each subsequent motion faster to launch. Own credit and commercial programs. Drive credit/commercial strategy and evolution while turning capabilities such as audience selection, eligibility, offer configuration, distribution, and measurement into reusable building blocks. Create a repeatable path from idea to scaled motion. Turn “we need to increase X” into targeted, operationalized, measurable GTM motions. Build leverage throughout the team. Enable ADs, VC Partnerships, and other Startup GTM teams to incubate and own programs independently rather than routing every motion through centralized operations. Develop shared measurement and experimentation frameworks and capabilities. Establish common approaches to sizing, economics, attribution
Jobs in United States
Startup Business Development Lead in San Francisco
99 active opportunities · Updated October 2026
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15 jobs
Explore current startup business development lead jobs in San Francisco. Filter by work mode, employment type, experience, department, date posted and distance.
$135.6K – $169.5K/yr
Why join us Brex is the intelligent finance platform that enables companies to spend smarter and move faster in more than 200 markets. By combining global corporate cards and banking with intuitive spend management, bill pay, and travel software, Brex enables founders and finance teams to accelerate operations, gain real-time visibility, and control spend effortlessly. Brex’s AI-native automation and world-class service eliminate manual expense and accounting tasks for customers so they can focus on what matters most. Tens of thousands of the world's best companies run on Brex, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood, Zoom, Plaid, Reddit, and SeatGeek. Working at Brex allows you to push your limits, challenge the status quo, and collaborate with some of the brightest minds in the industry. We’re committed to building a diverse team and inclusive culture and believe your potential should only be limited by how big you can dream. We make this a reality by empowering you with the tools, resources, and support you need to grow your career. Sales at Brex Sales is the growth engine at Brex. We bring in new customers, expand existing relationships, and drive the company’s bottom line. With unlimited territories and uncapped opportunity, your ambition sets the ceiling. We win together, celebrate often, and reward performance. If you want to sell a category-defining product with real ownership, this is your team. What you’ll do As a Startups Ambassador at Brex, you’ll be the face of our brand in the startup ecosystem by building trusted relationships with top-tier VC's and high-growth founders. You’ll represent Brex in the market by hosting events, driving engagement, and creating meaningful connections that bring value to the startup community. Your main focus will be to grow Brex’s presence within key venture networks by establishing and deepening partnerships, acquiring new customers, and fostering a strong local community. Success will be measured by your ability to brin
ABOUT BASETEN Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F , led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products. THE ROLE Are you passionate about advancing the application of artificial intelligence? We are looking for a Software Engineer focused on ML performance to join our dynamic team. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in a fast-paced startup environment and is eager to make significant contributions to the exciting field of LLM Inference. If you are a backend engineer who thrives on making things faster and is excited about open-source ML models, we look forward to your application. EXAMPLE INITIATIVES You'll get to work on these types of projects as part of our Model Performance team: Baseten Embeddings Inference: The fastest embeddings solution available The Baseten Inference Stack Driving model performance optimization RESPONSIBILITIES Implement, refine, and productionize cutting-edge techniques (quantization, speculative decoding, kv cache reuse, chunked prefill and LoRA) for ML model inference and infrastructure. Deep dive into underlying codebases of TensorRT, PyTorch, TensorRT-LLM, vllm, sglang, CUDA, and other libraries to debug ML performance issues. Apply and scale optimization techniques across a wide range of ML models, particularly large language models. Collaborate with a diverse team to design and implement innovative solutions. Own projects from idea to production. REQUIREMENTS Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field. Experience with one
From $200K/yr
We are looking for a talented engineer to lead evaluation of startup acquisition opportunities in the AI, cloud and security space. You will drive product evaluations, prepare and manage technical architecture discussions with target groups in Product and Engineering and provide roadmap suggestions for M&A and investments for Datadog. You will be a key partner to Datadog’s C-level leadership and highly visible at the most senior levels of Datadog. The role is reporting into the Senior Director of Product Strategy and falls within the Product organization. We are looking for an innovative and strategic thinker who is passionate about the latest tech being developed by startups in the cloud, AI and security space. The ideal candidate enjoys researching and evaluating new technologies, works effectively with cross-functional teams, and communicates opinions concisely to our leadership team. Broad understanding of relevant Cloud Technologies and deep understanding of the full coverage of Datadogs current offerings is necessary. The Corporate Development team is small and values authentic, strong-willed individuals who think creatively and proactively. This role leads technical due diligence from a product and architecture perspective across our acquisition pipeline. You'll scope and stand up proof-of-concept and sandbox environments to stress-test candidate products, then give an honest, unvarnished view of their quality and depth - the kind of assessment that holds up regardless of deal momentum. You'll assess technical architecture, flag the risks and open questions that matter most early, and turn that into a clear post-acquisition integration path. Working closely with engineering, you'll keep the evaluation focused on what's actually decision-relevant, then translate the findings into strategic recommendations for leadership and help carry the integration through by partnering with the right people on the other side. What You’l
$181K – $226K/yr
Why join us Brex is the intelligent finance platform that enables companies to spend smarter and move faster in more than 200 markets. By combining global corporate cards and banking with intuitive spend management, bill pay, and travel software, Brex enables founders and finance teams to accelerate operations, gain real-time visibility, and control spend effortlessly. Brex’s AI-native automation and world-class service eliminate manual expense and accounting tasks for customers so they can focus on what matters most. Tens of thousands of the world's best companies run on Brex, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood, Zoom, Plaid, Reddit, and SeatGeek. Working at Brex allows you to push your limits, challenge the status quo, and collaborate with some of the brightest minds in the industry. We’re committed to building a diverse team and inclusive culture and believe your potential should only be limited by how big you can dream. We make this a reality by empowering you with the tools, resources, and support you need to grow your career. Sales at Brex The GTM team is the driving factor behind revenue for Brex and every member of our team directly affects our bottom line. We focus on generating new opportunities, acquiring new customers, and building even stronger relationships with our current customers. Our winning culture recognizes big team wins and celebrates individual accomplishments. We ensure that top performers are recognized and have built a competitive environment to motivate and unify the team. What you’ll do As a Relationship Manager for our Startups team, you play a pivotal role in the success and satisfaction of our existing Startup clients by providing the necessary resources, guidance and support. This role requires excellent communication and interpersonal skills, a deep knowledge of Brex products, an understanding of the startup ecosystem and a passion for helping entrepreneurs and finance leaders achieve their goals. Where you'll work This role wil
About the Team The Developer Experience team at OpenAI has a singular focus: empowering developers globally. Our mission is to provide every developer and startup on the planet with the most delightful and seamless experience to integrate AI into their applications and products. We ensure developers have the tools, resources, and support they need to unlock AI’s full potential. We create inspiring demos, developer tools, sample applications, and technical content that show developers how to build with Codex and frontier models like GPT-6 Astra, GPT-Live, and GPT-Image-2.5 to create powerful agents and AI-native applications. We collaborate closely with product, engineering, research, and GTM teams to ensure the developer journey, from onboarding with Codex to first API call to production deployment, is seamless, effective, and delightful. About the Role As a Developer Experience Engineer, Cyber, you will create technical content, developer tools, and sample applications that help developers and security teams secure the software they build and depend on. You will turn OpenAI’s cybersecurity capabilities, including Codex Security, into clear, runnable examples and useful learning experiences. You will work directly with developers, security practitioners, and technical founders to understand their needs and show how AI can improve secure development and defensive security workflows. We’re looking for a hands-on engineer who combines strong software skills, creativity, developer empathy, and curiosity about cybersecurity, and who can own projects from the first prototype through release and ongoing improvement. In this role, you will: Build demos, sample applications, and developer tools that demonstrate practical ways to use Codex, OpenAI’s APIs, and Cyber products for secure software development and defensive workflows. Create tutorials, blog posts, videos, and code samples that help developers understand security findings, validate and prioritize vulnerabilities, r
From $200K/yr
The Datadog for Startups (DDFS) program helps the next generation of fast-scaling companies adopt best-in-class observability and security from day one. We're looking for the technical engine of this program - someone who can sit across from a startup CTO, earn credibility in the first five minutes, and help them see how Datadog fits into their stack before they've even finished describing it. You'll be the first technical member on a lean, five-person team, owning the technical motion end-to-end: discovery calls, demos, startup enablement, forward-deployed engineering projects, and representing Datadog at founder events across San Francisco. This isn't a traditional SE seat - it's part solutions architect, part technical consultant, part startup evangelist, and it requires someone adaptable, proactive, and ready to take initiative without being told what to do next. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds, and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You'll Do: Run discovery calls with startup CTOs and engineering leads to identify quick wins, validate technical needs, and position Datadog against alternatives like Grafana, New Relic, Sentry, and Clickhouse Deliver tailored Datadog demos and help startups get instrumented quickly - removing friction, showcasing value, and ensuring smooth technical onboarding, particularly around AI/ML observability, infrastructure scaling, and security Build automation to improve internal team workflows - EX: outreach, reporting, the application process, and website updates Represent Datadog for Startups at accelerator demo days, hackathons, conferences, founder dinners, and workshops across San Francisco Build relationships across SF's startup ecosystem - founders, VCs, accelerator partners, and technical communities - and develop thought leadership content for tech
From $213K/yr
Datadog is seeking a highly motivated Senior Corporate Development Lead to drive our AI product strategy, build strong relationships across the founder and VC ecosystem, and support high-impact initiatives including acquisitions, venture investments, and startup partnerships. You will be part of a small, high-visibility team that reports directly to Datadog’s Founder/CEO. The ideal candidate is passionate about AI and developer tools, comfortable rolling up their sleeves, and excited to operate in a fluid, technically demanding environment. You will support evaluations, source promising AI startups, collaborate closely with internal product and engineering leaders, and help position Datadog as the preferred partner for the next generation of founders. This role is ideal for someone who is hungry for increased responsibility, operates with authenticity and creativity, and prioritizes the company’s interests. At Datadog, we place value in our office culture - the relationships and collaboration it builds, and the creativity it brings to the table. We operate as a hybrid workplace to ensure our Datadogs can create a work-life harmony that best fits them. What You’ll Do: Support Datadog’s AI product strategy by analyzing emerging technologies, market opportunities, and competitive dynamics. Source high-potential AI startups for acquisition, investment, or partnership, and build a strong presence across the founder and VC ecosystem. Attend meetups, conferences, and ecosystem events to expand Datadog’s visibility and pipeline opportunities. Drive workstreams across diligence, valuation, financial modeling, strategic assessment, and internal recommendations. Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to evaluate build/buy/partner opportunities aligned with Datadog’s AI roadmap. Support negotiation processes, including term sheets and partnership structures. Collaborate on integration planning with cross-functional partners after acquisitions or strategic de
About the Team The Developer Experience team at OpenAI has a singular focus: empowering developers globally. Our mission is to provide every developer and startup on the planet with the most delightful and seamless experience to integrate AI into their applications and products. We ensure developers have the tools, resources, and support they need to unlock AI’s full potential. We create inspiring demos, developer tools, sample applications, and technical content that show developers how to build with Codex and frontier models like GPT-5.6, GPT-Live, and GPT-Image-2 to create powerful agents and AI-native applications. We collaborate closely with product, engineering, research, and GTM teams to ensure the developer journey, from onboarding with Codex to first API call to production deployment, is seamless, effective, and delightful. About the Role As a Developer Experience Engineer, you will create compelling technical content, developer tools, and sample applications designed to inspire developers and enable them to succeed with Codex and OpenAI’s APIs and products for developers. You will engage with developers and technical founders, demonstrating best practices and building innovative applications powered by frontier models, multimodal capabilities, and tools like Codex. We’re looking for people who combine strong technical skills, creativity, and a passion for engaging with and empowering developers. In this role, you will: Develop demos and sample applications that showcase best practices for building with Codex, frontier models, multimodal capabilities, and agents. Create high-quality technical content—including tutorials, blog posts, videos, and code samples—to educate and inspire the developer community about our models, APIs, and Codex. Actively engage with and foster a vibrant local and global developer ecosystem around OpenAI’s platform and products. Represent OpenAI at developer events and online, serving as a knowledgeable and approachable advocate for
About the Team OpenAI’s Hardware organization develops AI-native silicon and system-level solutions for the unique demands of advanced AI workloads. Building on efforts like Jalapeño, the team is developing future generations of AI-native silicon and tightly integrated systems to power the next generation of frontier models. By co-designing chips, systems, tools, and methodologies, the team helps deliver faster, more efficient, and production-ready hardware for OpenAI’s supercomputing platform. About the Role We’re looking for a Rack Power Engineer with deep expertise in high-power conversion and distribution to design, qualify, and support power systems for AI supercomputers. You will own rack power solutions—including power shelves, AC/DC rectifiers, power supply units (PSUs), power management controllers (PMCs), and high-current distribution—from requirements and supplier development through deployment. You will also monitor fleet rack power health, lead debugging and root-cause investigations, and drive improvements into hardware, firmware, and qualification coverage. This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees. In this role, you will: Own rack power architecture and requirements for high-power AI supercomputing systems, including power budgets, AC input interfaces, DC distribution, redundancy, efficiency, serviceability, and integration with data center infrastructure. Drive the design and supplier development of power shelves, rectifiers, PSUs, PMCs, busbars, connectors, and protection circuits. Review electrical designs and control behavior, and evaluate performance, cost, reliability, and availability trade-offs. Define and execute component, shelf, and rack qualification plans covering load transients, current sharing, hot-swap, startup and shutdown, redundancy failover, fault protection and recovery, thermal limits, and AC disturbances and ride-through
Our Purpose Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential. Title and Summary Vice President, Software Engineering Overview Decision Stream is Mastercard's next-generation AI-native decisioning platform, designed to power intelligent, real-time decisions across fraud, authentication, payments, and risk. Built with a startup mindset and enterprise-scale ambition, the platform combines innovation, speed, and engineering excellence to redefine decisioning across Mastercard's global ecosystem. We are seeking a visionary and hands-on VP of Software Engineering to help build and scale the platform. This leader will partner closely with Product, Architecture, AI, and Platform Engineering teams to drive technology strategy, architecture, engineering execution, and organizational growth. What You'll Do Lead Through Technical Excellence • Serve as a senior technology leader and role model for engineering teams. • Drive architecture, design, and technology decisions across distributed systems, streaming, AI, and cloud-native platforms. • Engage deeply with engineers, architects, and product leaders to solve complex technical challenges. • Influence engineering standards, software quality, and operational excellence. Build and Scale the Platform • Help shape and deliver a highly scalable, resilient, and secure decisioning platform operating at Mastercard scale. • Balan
About the Team OpenAI, in partnership with our capital and technology partners, is building a global network of advanced datacenters to support the most demanding AI workloads. The Infrastructure Quality team ensures that all datacenter systems are manufactured, delivered, and commissioned to the highest standards of quality, reliability, and performance. We work closely with manufacturing partners, general contractors, engineering teams, and operations staff to ensure that every component is delivered ready for installation, startup, and long-term service. Our work spans from vendor qualification through commissioning, ensuring operational readiness across our global portfolio. About the Role We are seeking an experienced Manufacturing Quality Engineer (MQE) to establish, implement, and manage a manufacturing-focused quality program for datacenter infrastructure. This role will be responsible for vendor oversight, quality assurance, process improvement, and issue resolution for all critical systems. You will lead vendor audits, monitor performance metrics, and coordinate corrective actions to ensure predictable delivery schedules, reduced risks, and operational reliability. By partnering with vendors, construction teams, and internal stakeholders, you will help ensure OpenAI’s datacenters are delivered on time and built to the highest operational standards. Travel Domestic and international travel as needed (estimated 40–60%) to manufacturing sites, datacenter locations, and partner facilities. Key Responsibilities Vendor Oversight & Performance Management Conduct manufacturing evaluation, audits, and improve vendor performance across production, inspection, testing, and delivery phases. Develop and track quality metrics to assess manufacturing performance and identify trends. Partner with vendors to refine processes, training, and quality controls to mitigate risks before shipment. Program Development & Execution Develop and maintain a datacenter-focused m
About Supabase Supabase is the open-source backend platform trusted by millions of developers to build web apps, SaaS products, and AI-native applications. Our Partnerships team works across the ecosystem - technology partners, cloud platforms, VCs, accelerators, and startup programs - to make Supabase the default backend for the next generation of companies. About the Role We're looking for a Startup Partner Enablement & Programs Manager to bring our partner ecosystem to life through enablement, events, and programs to raise awareness of Supabase's value proposition to early stage startups. You'll own the materials, playbooks, and activations that help our partners - VCs, accelerators, incubators and entrepreneurship programs - successfully promote and build with Supabase. That includes organizing Supabase's presence at partner and VC-related events, running office hours, hackathons and VIP dinners, and turning relationships into repeatable, high-impact programs. This role sits on the Partnerships team and reports to the Head of Startups, working closely with teammates across the startup program, GTM, developer relations, and marketing. Because the bulk of our events and partner activity is concentrated in San Francisco and the Bay Area, we strongly prefer candidates based there who can regularly attend and host events in person. It's a great fit for someone who loves the operational craft of enablement and programs and wants to work at the intersection of startups, venture, and developer tools. What You'll Do Build and maintain partner enablement materials - decks, one-pagers, playbooks, and activation guides - that help partners across the ecosystem promote and build with Supabase Manage the operational cadence of partner programs: collaborating on strategy, tracking activations, and keeping program logistics running smoothly across partner types Organize Supabase's presence at partner and VC-related events — demo days, founder summits, portfolio workshops, p
About Sentry Software runs the world and the pace is faster than ever. Sentry helps developers fix errors and performance issues before users notice, so teams can spend less time firefighting and more time building. Trusted by 200,000+ organizations, Sentry is today’s application monitoring standard and our team is building its AI-native future. About the Role Sentry already has a startup program: credits, partner deals with YC and a16z, a landing page with a terminal theme that developers actually think is cool. What we don't have is someone whose full-time job is making this program a real growth engine. That's this role. You'll own startup marketing end-to-end: the partner ecosystem, the community presence, the acquisition programs, the brand in rooms full of founders and early engineers. You'll take what exists today and turn it into something that makes Sentry the default monitoring choice for every new company shipping code. This role reports to the Head of Enterprise Marketing (yes, we get how this can be confusing, but she’s pretty cool) and works across Growth, Product Marketing, and DevEx. You'll have real autonomy to shape the strategy and build programs from scratch – but you'll also need to execute quickly, (kind of – we can explain more) measure what works, and kill what doesn't. In this role you will Build and scale startup partnerships. Expand relationships with accelerators, incubators, VC platforms, and startup deal aggregators. Make Sentry's credits program a no-brainer inclusion in every startup perks stack. Own the startup acquisition funnel. Design programs that move early-stage companies from free plan → credits program → paid customers → expansion. Instrument everything so we know where the pipeline is and where it leaks. Be Sentry's face in the startup ecosystem. Show up at demo days, founder events, and SF tech week. Build relationships with the people building the next generation of companies. Not because it's a line item, but because you'
About the Team The Legal team is building the next generation of AI-powered products and experiences for the legal industry. We are exploring how advanced AI systems can transform legal workflows, improve access to information, and enable legal professionals and organizations to work more effectively. As a founding member of the Legal engineering team, you will help define the technical foundation for this new product area from the earliest stages. You’ll operate at the intersection of AI, product, and real-world legal workflows—identifying opportunities, building prototypes, and turning emerging ideas into scalable products that can create meaningful impact. We operate with a startup-like mindset inside OpenAI: small teams, rapid iteration cycles, and a willingness to explore bold ideas, learn quickly, and adapt based on user feedback. Our goal is to build products that meaningfully improve how legal professionals work while leveraging OpenAI’s cutting-edge models and infrastructure. About the Role As a Founding Full-Stack Software Engineer on the Legal team, you will help imagine, build, and scale new AI-powered products for the legal industry. You’ll work across the stack to design intuitive user experiences, build robust backend systems, and create the foundations for products used by legal professionals and organizations around the world. You’ll have significant ownership from the earliest stages—working closely with product, design, research, and go-to-market partners to understand customer needs, shape product direction, and deliver high-impact solutions. This includes rapidly prototyping new concepts, building production-quality applications on top of OpenAI’s platforms, and developing new technical approaches when existing systems are not sufficient. We’re looking for engineers who thrive in ambiguity, have strong product instincts, and enjoy building from 0→1. You should be comfortable moving quickly, making thoughtful technical decisions, and taking owner
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