Head of Strategic Business Development

castaigroupinc · European Union; New York, New York, United States; San Francisco, California, United States

Experience: 10-15+ years of experience

## Why Cast AI?
Cast AI is the leading Application Performance Automation (APA®) platform, helping organizations automate cloud operations at scale.
By embedding autonomous decision-making directly into Kubernetes and AI infrastructure, Cast AI continuously optimizes performance, reliability, and efficiency - eliminating the need for manual infrastructure management. More than 2,100 organizations, including Akamai, BMW, Cisco, FICO, Hugging Face, NielsenIQ, Swisscom, and TGS, trust Cast AI to power their cloud infrastructure.
We're a global company operating across 34 countries, backed by world-class investors, and in 2026 became a unicorn. We're building the future of autonomous cloud operations - and we're looking for exceptional people who want to help shape what's next.
## About the role
Some of Cast AI's most important growth opportunities will not emerge from existing functions or traditional go-to-market motions.
They will come through strategic partnerships, new business models, and executive relationships that cut across Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Partnerships, and executive leadership.
These opportunities often begin as an executive relationship or promising idea but lack a clear owner, business proposition, and execution plan.
As Head of Strategic Business Development, you will close that gap by identifying and prioritizing a focused portfolio of high-potential strategic opportunities, developing senior external relationships, turning ideas into compelling commercial propositions, negotiating and launching new initiatives, and transitioning validated programs to their long-term operating owners.
You will own each opportunity from initial development through commercial definition and early execution. Once a program has a validated proposition, clear economics, a repeatable operating model, and a long-term owner, responsibility should transfer rather than remain permanently with you.
This is not a day-to-day partner management role, a BDR or pipeline generation role, a corporate development or M&A position, or a Chief of Staff role. It is a hands-on business-building role with meaningful external accountability.
Success will be measured by the strategic and economic value you create—not the number of meetings, introductions, signed memoranda, or partnership announcements.
## What you'll do
• Represent Cast AI leadership at selected industry conferences, executive forums, partner meetings, and other strategic external engagements.
• Establish relationships with senior business, product, and technology executives across the cloud and AI ecosystem.
• Identify opportunities that expand Cast AI's market access, strengthen its product position, create new routes to market, or unlock new revenue potential.
• Translate initial conversations into clear customer propositions, commercial models, and strategic business cases.
• Evaluate opportunities based on strategic fit, customer value, economic potential, technical feasibility, required investment, time to impact, and probability of execution.
• Lead the strategic business development process through agreement, coordinating with Legal, Finance, Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Partnerships.
• Incubate new strategic programs by building cross-functional launch plans, coordinating product integrations, joint solution development, pilots, co-selling initiatives, and market activation.
• Resolve cross-functional barriers, maintain momentum through the ambiguous early stages, and assess whether initiatives are creating sufficient customer and economic value to justify further investment.
• Transition validated programs to permanent operating owners by documenting the proposition, economics, operating model, governance, and key external relationships.
## What we're looking for
• Approximately 10-15+ years of experience in Strategic Business Development, Partnerships, Alliances, Enterprise Technology, or an adjacent commercial leadership role.
• Meaningful experience in cloud infrastructure, AI, developer tools, enterprise software, or another technically sophisticated B2B ecosystem.
• Demonstrated success originating, structuring, negotiating, launching - and where appropriate, ending - strategic relationships.
• Experience working directly with C-suite, product, technology, and commercial executives.
• Strong commercial judgment, including business-case development and partnership economics.
• Sufficient technical fluency to engage credibly with Product and Engineering leaders.
• Experience aligning multiple internal functions and external counterparties within a high-growth environment.
• The ability to independently perform the analysis, relationship development, negotiation, and program-building work without relying on a large team.
• Executive presence with the credibility to represent Cast AI independently in high-stakes external settings.
• Willingness to travel globally (approximately 30–50%).
Particularly attractive backgrounds include senior partner-development or alliances roles at a hyperscaler, strategic business development roles at AI or AI infrastructure companies, or comparable roles within high-growth infrastructure software businesses. Experience at both a large technology platform and a growth-stage company is especially valuable.
## What's in it for you?
• Build one of the most strategic roles at one of the fastest-growing infrastructure software companies in the world.
• Work directly with Cast AI's executive leadership on high-impact initiatives that shape the company's future.
• Build relationships with some of the most influential organizations across the global cloud and AI ecosystem.
• Flexible, remote-first global working environment.
• 401(k) retirement plan with 100% company match on employee contributions up to 6% of pay (available after three months of employment).
• UnitedHealthcare medical, dental, and vision coverage (US employees).
• Learning budget to support your professional and personal growth.
• Team-building budget and regular company events.
• Equipment budget to ensure you have everything you need to succeed.
• Competitive salary (Expected OTE:

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## Hiring process
• Screening call with a Recruiter
• Hiring Manager interview
• One to two additional interviews based on the role
• Culture Check interview with a Cast AI executive
*As part of our standard hiring process, a background check may be conducted at the final stage of recruitment through our third-party provider, Checkr.
*Please note that Cast AI does not provide visa sponsorship or work permit support for this role.

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