Member of Strategic Staff, Model Ecosystem

Runway is building AI to simulate the world through merging art and science. The role is to source, activate, and scale relationships across Runway's growing portfolio of model partners, bringing the best models from AI labs around the world to users alongside Runway's own models. The role works closely across Engineering, Product, Legal, Finance, and Marketing.

Responsibilities

Own a broad portfolio of model partners end to end, across modalities; Track the model landscape relentlessly: spot new labs and releases early and bring the strongest ones to the team as candidates for integration; Take new partners from zero to launched: source, structure and negotiate commercial terms, then close with Legal and Finance; Be the partner's main point of contact through launch, working closely with our engineering team; Build deep, trusted relationships with founders, BD leads and research teams at our partners, and turn those relationships into early access, better terms and joint launches; Run the portfolio with rigor: set check-in cadences, monitor relationship health, and spot and escalate risk early; Track usage, spend and margin by partner and model, and use that data to decide where to invest, renegotiate or step back; Partner with Marketing and our partners on co-marketing for model launches; Build the frameworks and tools that let the function scale as the ecosystem grows

Requirements

5+ years of experience across some combination of partnerships, business development, GTM, consulting, or founding/operating, with a track record of having owned outcomes end to end; Experience negotiating commercial agreements, ideally usage-based, API or platform deals; Genuine obsession with generative AI: you know the labs, you try new models the day they ship, and you have opinions on what makes one good; Demonstrated range: you've done the deal and the integration and the launch; High technical aptitude for understanding complex technologies, tools, systems, and issues; Strong analytical capabilities, with the ability to turn usage and spend data into a clear recommendation; Ability to manage many relationships and priorities at once in a fast-paced environment without dropping threads; Clear, concise communication, from a startup founder to a big-lab partnerships team to a Runway engineer in the same day; A strong bias towards action and belief that no task is too small for you; Highly resourceful, with the ability to create structure and work autonomously amid ambiguity; New York-based preferred