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Director of AI Ecosystem & Partnerships

212k – 274kNew York, NYBusiness DevelopmentHybrid8+ YOE
Summary

Lead Justworks' commercial AI ecosystem strategy, building strategic partnerships with frontier AI labs and platforms while driving AI-native go-to-market initiatives. Requires 8-12+ years in strategic partnerships, business development, or platform ecosystems with deep understanding of AI landscape.

About the role

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.

Compensation

  • Base wage range: $212,000 - $274,000
  • On-Target Earnings (inclusive of incentive compensation): $53,000 - $68,500
Skills
Strategic PartnershipsBusiness DevelopmentPlatform EcosystemsAI StrategyGTM StrategyProduct StrategyCorporate StrategyEcosystem PartnershipsAPI EcosystemsDeveloper Platforms
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