Snowflake is about empowering enterprises to achieve their full potential - and people too. With a culture that's all in on impact, innovation, and collaboration, Snowflake is the sweet spot for building big, moving fast, and taking technology - and careers - to the next level.
We are seeking a product-focused and customer-obsessed AI/ML Business Development Lead to be a foundational member of the Snowflake for Startups team. This role will lead the strategic integration and GTM execution for Snowflake's core AI/ML and Generative AI product partnerships, specifically driving the adoption of
Snowflake Cortex among top AI-native startups.
This position is designed for a candidate with a strong foundation in machine learning engineering and AI enabled technologies, who can architect a product-partner strategy with C-level executives and their teams, influence the technical roadmap, and orchestrate complex, cross-functional initiatives that deliver on strategic objectives for Cortex adoption and ecosystem growth. The successful candidate will transition deep technical knowledge into strategic business outcomes, serving as the technical and strategic bridge between Snowflake's AI Product teams, AI native startups, and key Foundation Model (FM) providers.
Key Job ResponsibilitiesTechnical & Product Partnership Strategy
- Enable deep Product Partnerships: Serve as the technical expert to drive product partnerships with leading startups, Foundation Model providers (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta), and specialized AI companies (e.g., agentic platforms, inference clouds).
- Influence Product Roadmap: Provide critical, data-driven feedback from the AI startup ecosystem to Snowflake's AI Product teams (AI Product Management, AI Engineering, Partner Solutions Engineering), directly influencing the Cortex roadmap priorities for features like inference capability on open-source models (Arctic Inference) and Cortex Rest API functionality.
- Establish Technical Governance: Ensure partner solutions and integrations adhere to Snowflake's best practices for data governance, security, and performance optimization, particularly within the Snowflake Data Cloud perimeter.
- Technical Thought Leadership: Provide technical thought leadership on enterprise AI/ML architecture patterns (MLOps, data lake architectures, real-time inference), serving as the definitive technical advisor for complex customer scenarios leveraging Cortex.
- Field Enablement: Design and implement the technical portion of the field enablement program, training Startups Sales and Solutions Engineering (SE) teams on how to effectively sell FM access/token capacity and demonstrate Snowflake's faster, more efficient inference capabilities.
Strategic GTM & Partner Ecosystem Leadership
- Execute Strategic GTM Plan: Drive the execution of the 2025/2026 AI Startups GTM Strategy by prioritizing, onboarding, and deeply engaging with the core 'top 500' Tier 0 (T0) and Tier 1 (T1) startups.
- Transform Partner Relationships: Strategically manage relationships with FM providers to move them beyond transactional sales channels into genuine product partnerships, ensuring shared GTM benefits and credit attribution for their representatives for consumption via Cortex.
- Drive PLG Motion: Strategically support a Product-Led Growth (PLG) motion by defining the technical value proposition and seamless experience for the Cortex Rest API, aiming to attract and onboard "off Snowflake" startups.
- Executive-Level Influence: Manage executive-level relationships with partner C-suite leadership and top T0/T1 startup founders, facilitating high-value technical and strategic alignment sessions.
- Cross-Functional Coordination: Lead a unified, cross-functional "AI Startups Tiger Team" across AI Product, Startups Sales, and Corporate Development to ensure coordinated GTM and ecosystem support.
Strategic OKRs and Outcomes
- Cortex Rest API Adoption: Achieve measurable growth in API usage and new startup acquisition (Monthly new startups acquisition target, Revenue and token consumption by model provider).
- Conversion to Native: Drive the conversion to 'built as Snowflake native' from AI native startups as a key measure of product stickiness.
- Ecosystem Validation: Own the development of Publicly referenceable case studies demonstrating successful AI application builds on Cortex, including those focused on open-source/SLMs and inference capabilities.
- Market Penetration: Define, track, and report on critical market penetration metrics:
- Percentage of newly funded startups on Snowflake.
- Growth of startups in a specific venture fund or accelerator cohort on Snowflake.
Basic Qualifications- Master's Degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Applied AI, or a related quantitative field, or equivalent experience as a cofounder-CTO/CPO.
- 5+ years of experience in product management, strategic partnerships, or business development roles with a strong emphasis on AI/ML or cloud technologies.
- Advanced technical expertise and proven deep understanding of enterprise AI/ML architecture patterns, including:
- Foundation Models, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Small Language Models (SLMs).
- MLOps, data lake architectures, and real-time inference systems (e.g., vLLM).
- Enterprise AI governance frameworks and security standards.
- Demonstrated ability to drive strategic product-focused outcomes through partnerships and influence cross-functional engineering teams.
- Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical audiences (CTO/CDAO) and business leaders.
Preferred Qualifications- Previous experience at major cloud providers (AWS Bedrock, Azure ML, Google Cloud Platform Vertex) or leading foundation model/AI platforms.
- Technical certifications in cloud provider ML/AI services or solutions architecture.
- Published thought leadership (whitepapers, blogs, conference presentations) in AI/ML domains.
- Experience in a role with P&L or significant budget accountability related to technology partnerships.
Every Snowflake employee is expected to follow the company's confidentiality and security standards for handling sensitive data. Snowflake employees must abide by the company's data security plan as an essential part of their duties. It is every employee's duty to keep customer information secure and confidential.
Snowflake is growing fast, and we're scaling our team to help enable and accelerate our growth. We are looking for people who share our values, challenge ordinary thinking, and push the pace of innovation while building a future for themselves and Snowflake.
How do you want to make your impact?
For jobs located in the United States, please visit the job posting on the Snowflake Careers Site for salary and benefits information: careers.snowflake.com
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