Senior AI Partnerships Lead - Remote, Flexible, Equity

Runware is the API for all AI. We give developers and product teams a single, unified endpoint to access, run, and scale any AI model — without building or maintaining the infrastructure behind it. The problem we solve is one every product team hits: the AI model landscape is fragmented, fast-moving, and expensive to keep up with. Integrating new models takes engineering time, costs spiral as you scale, and latency kills user experience. Runware abstracts all of that away. Through one API, teams can access hundreds of thousands of AI models across image, video, audio, and beyond — and ship AI-powered features in minutes rather than months.

What makes our API different is what runs underneath it. Our proprietary Sonic Inference Engine® is built on custom hardware and an optimized software stack, delivering up to 10x lower pricing and 30–40% faster inference than traditional cloud deployments. Customers don't pay for idle compute — they pay for what they use, and they get more of it for less.

Founded in 2023 and already powering over 10 billion AI generations for more than 200,000 developers and 300 million end users worldwide, Runware counts Wix, Quora, Freepik, and Together.ai among its customers. In December 2025, we closed a $50M Series A led by Dawn Capital, with Comcast Ventures, Insight Partners, a16z Speedrun, and Speedinvest — bringing total funding to $66M. We're expanding rapidly across new modalities and growing our teams in London and San Francisco. This is a pivotal moment in Runware's growth — and this role sits at the heart of it.

Role Summary

Runware is looking for a Senior Partnerships Manager to own and scale our strategic relationships with the world’s leading AI model providers. This person will ensure we have the strongest possible commercial terms, roadmap visibility, product access, market insights, and strategic value from our model-provider ecosystem. They will be the central owner for model-provider partnerships and will work closely with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Legal to turn external AI partnerships into measurable business value. This is a senior, cross-functional commercial role for someone who is an excellent negotiator, a trusted relationship-builder, and a fast learner in a rapidly changing AI market. The ideal candidate can build deep relationships externally, negotiate hard commercially, and translate model-provider capabilities into internal product decisions, customer-facing value, and improved unit economics.

What You’ll Do

• Own and negotiate strategic model-provider relationships: Manage and deepen relationships with the leading generative media model providers - spanning frontier labs, generative media model creators, open-source communities, audio and 3D model providers, and inference infrastructure partners.
• Negotiate best-in-market commercial terms: Lead negotiations on pricing, volume commitments, credits, preferred access, support levels, SLAs, roadmap visibility, co-marketing, launch support, enterprise terms, and non-standard strategic deal structures.
• Turn partnerships into business value: Identify and execute opportunities that improve product capabilities, reduce costs, improve margins, accelerate model launches, enhance customer experience, or differentiate Runware in the market.
• Coordinate across internal teams: Act as the connective tissue between model providers and Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, and leadership.
• Maintain AI market intelligence: Track new model releases, benchmark shifts, pricing changes, context-window improvements, multimodal capabilities, latency and reliability tradeoffs, enterprise terms, ecosystem moves, and competitor access.
• Drive partner-led launches on the commercial side: Coordinate timing with model creators, secure preferred or exclusive access, align launch narratives across Marketing and Sales.
• Support GTM and customer communication: Help Sales and Marketing translate model-provider updates into customer-facing value, launch narratives, partner comparison notes, competitive positioning, sales enablement, and customer-ready messaging.
• Build a scalable partnership operating rhythm: Create and maintain partner account plans, executive relationship maps, QBRs, negotiation trackers, pricing and terms databases, launch calendars, model-update summaries, escalation paths, and partnership performance reporting.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, partner management, commercial strategy, enterprise sales, vendor management, or a related role.
• Strong track record negotiating complex commercial agreements with strategic partners, vendors, platforms, infrastructure providers, SaaS companies, cloud providers, API companies, or technology ecosystems.
• Excellent commercial judgment, including the ability to evaluate pricing, usage commitments, deal structures, margin impact, and long-term strategic value.
• Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, and executive stakeholders.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical and commercial information for different audiences.
• High ownership, strong follow-through, structured execution, and comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous market.

Strongly preferred

• Experience in AI, machine learning, cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, API businesses, SaaS, data infrastructure, or enterprise software.
• Understanding of the AI model ecosystem: frontier labs, open-source models, inference providers, multimodal models, model pricing, latency, context windows, enterprise deployment needs, and AI application architecture.
• Technical fluency sufficient to discuss model performance, API capabilities, inference requirements, context windows, multimodality, fine-tuning, evaluation, latency, reliability, and model launches.
• Prior experience negotiating with large technology vendors, cloud providers, platform partners, or strategic ecosystem partners.
• Experience building partner programs, partner operating cadences, QBRs, partner scorecards, or executive-level relationship maps.

We’re a remote-first collective, meeting in person twice a year to plan, brainstorm, celebrate wins, and enjoy some face-to-face time. We have core hours for cooperative working and calls, but outside of that your calendar is yours. Work the hours that let you perform at your peak while also building a healthy life. Our release cycles are fast and intense, but they’re followed by real downtime. After big pushes we expect the team to unplug, recharge, and come back ready & stronger than ever for the next leap.

Generous paid time off– vacation, sick days, public holidays. Meaningful stock options– share in the upside you create. Remote-first setup– work from home anywhere we can employ you. Flexible hours– own your schedule outside core collaboration blocks. Family leave– paid maternity, paternity, and caregiver time. Company retreats– twice-yearly gatherings in inspiring locations.