Director of AI Ecosystem & Partnerships

What You Will Work On

Define and lead Justworks’ commercial AI ecosystem strategy

• Develop a unified strategy for how Justworks wins within AI platforms, agentic workflows, and emerging software ecosystems.
• Translate fragmented efforts across integrations, APIs, partnerships, AI discovery, and go-to-market into a clear roadmap with measurable outcomes.
• Identify where Justworks should invest, partner, build, or experiment to increase visibility and adoption in AI-driven customer journeys.
• Build executive-ready recommendations that connect AI ecosystem opportunities to commercial impact, customer value, and long-term strategic positioning.

Build and scale strategic AI partnerships

• Own and develop relationships with frontier AI labs, AI platforms, developer ecosystems, and other strategic partners.
• Identify opportunities for commercial partnerships, co-marketing, marketplace placement, featured integrations, and ecosystem distribution.
• Ensure Justworks is not only technically integrated, but visible, trusted, and prioritized within relevant partner ecosystems.
• Represent Justworks externally with the credibility and judgment required to engage senior partner stakeholders.

Drive AI-native go-to-market and discovery

• Partner with Marketing to evolve traditional search and content strategies into AI discovery and Answer Engine Optimization approaches.
• Help define how Justworks should appear in AI-generated experiences, recommendations, and customer research workflows.
• Develop messaging, campaigns, and channel strategies tailored to AI-first startups, technology companies, and businesses adopting AI-native workflows.
• Turn AI platform visibility, customer behavior, and ecosystem data into practical recommendations for Sales, Marketing, and Product.

Partner closely with Product and Engineering

• Collaborate with Product and Engineering on integrations, API capabilities, and platform requirements that support AI ecosystem adoption.
• Translate partner needs, customer workflows, and market signals into clear product insights and prioritization inputs.
• Help evaluate which technical investments are most likely to create commercial leverage.
• Bridge business strategy and technical execution without needing to be the technical owner.

Create commercial impact and operating leverage

• Define success metrics across platform visibility, partner-sourced pipeline, AI-driven acquisition, ecosystem placement, and revenue contribution.
• Build business cases that help leadership evaluate trade-offs, resource needs, and investment priorities.
• Turn early experiments into repeatable growth motions.
• Develop reusable frameworks, narratives, and operating models that help internal teams understand and act on AI ecosystem opportunities.

Qualifications

• 8–12+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, platform ecosystems, corporate strategy, product strategy, GTM strategy, or a related role.
• Experience working with or within platform ecosystems, such as SaaS platforms, marketplaces, API ecosystems, developer platforms, or emerging AI platforms.
• Understand the AI landscape to separate durable strategic shifts from hype, including LLMs, AI agents, copilots, AI search, and emerging enterprise workflows.
• Structured thinker who can take an ambiguous opportunity and turn it into a clear strategy, roadmap, business case, or executive narrative.
• Commercially oriented and can connect ecosystem activity to pipeline, revenue, adoption, retention, or strategic positioning.
• Operate cross-functionally across Product, Marketing, Sales, Partnerships, and senior leadership without needing perfect ownership lines.
• Comfortable working directly with data, market signals, partner inputs, and customer insights to make practical recommendations.
• Strong communicator who can present with clarity and conviction to executives, partners, and internal teams.
• Builder mindset: energized by creating structure where none exists and turning early signals into scalable operating models.
• Genuinely curious about how AI will change software discovery, business workflows, and the way companies choose and adopt tools.

What Success Looks Like

• Align fragmented AI-related efforts into a prioritized roadmap.
• Establish meaningful relationships with the AI platforms and ecosystems most relevant to Justworks.
• Increase visibility and discoverability in AI-driven customer journeys.
• Identify and launch partnership or platform motions that create measurable pipeline, adoption, or revenue impact.
• Give Product, Marketing, Sales, and Partnerships a shared language for where AI ecosystem opportunities matter — and where they do not.
• Build the foundation for Justworks to become a trusted HR, payroll, and workforce solution within the next generation of software workflows.

Compensation

• Base wage range: $147,000 - $190,000 per year (New York City office)