BD & Strategy Manager

About Emerald

We’re at a pivotal moment in AI and energy: compute demand is surging, but power constraints threaten to stall innovation. Emerald AI operates at the nexus of AI and energy, pioneering solutions that let AI factories scale without overwhelming the grid. By making data centers flexible, we can unlock immense AI growth with limited capital costs, all while stabilizing the grid & enabling more renewables.

Our team of AI, cloud, software, and energy experts is on a mission to unlock AI’s potential sustainably, backed by premier investors and industry leaders like NVIDIA, Radical Ventures, Neotribe Ventures and Amplo.

About the Role

We are seeking our first BD & Strategy Manager to lead Emerald AI’s commercial strategy and forge the partnerships that will define our early market presence. You will be responsible for developing our go-to-market approach, building a pipeline of high-value opportunities, and ensuring our technology roadmap is shaped by customer and partner needs. This is a hybrid role that combines business development—cultivating relationships with hyperscalers, colocation providers, and enterprise data centers—with strategic planning, aligning market insights with company direction. You will work closely with both the strategy/BD leadership and the product/engineering teams to ensure Emerald AI is building solutions that address urgent, high-value problems and scale across target segments.

Key Responsibilities

• Shape Commercial Strategy: Key player in the development of our Strategic Long Range Plan; Define and refine our go to market strategy, including segmentation, ICP development, and positioning for early adopter segments.

• Build & Manage Pipeline: Identify, target, and engage prospective customers and strategic partners. Drive conversations from first contact through pilots and early deployments.

• Develop Partnerships: Identify where we are best served by partnering, define ideal partnership archetypes, find and develop high value relationships and execute on partnership plans through to fruition.

• Market Intelligence & Strategy: Analyze market trends, competitive dynamics, and customer feedback to inform Emerald AI’s go-to-market priorities and long-term strategic positioning, in collaboration with Product Management.

• Internal collaboration: Work closely with product and engineering, feeding real-world insights back to guide product development and roadmap priorities.

• Support Fundraising & Strategic Initiatives: Take on ad hoc workstreams to support capital raising, board meetings, industry conferences, grant applications, pitch competitions and more.

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience in high technology business development, corporate strategy, management consulting or private equity.

• 10+ years total experience, with significant exposure to early-stage startups or high-growth technology companies.

• Experience engaging with large, complex customers and navigating multi-stakeholder sales and partnership processes.

• Deep familiarity with the cloud service, data center and AI infrastructure landscape

• Knowledge of power markets and electric grids is highly desirable

• Strong analytical and strategic thinking skills; ability to gather insights from imperfect information, deliver actionable recommendations and then execute on those recommendations with urgency

• Excellent communication skills for keeping up with both technical and business stakeholders; effective presentation skills to executive audiences as well as in coordinating and corralling working teams

What We Offer

• A chance to join a team of industry leaders and experts working at the nexus of two pivotal industries in a collaborative and collegial environment.

• Building from zero to one: help the team build from the ground up. In addition to this role, you have the opportunity to contribute to strategy development, GTM planning, org design, and customer and investor interfacing.

• Comprehensive benefits package including insurance for medical, dental, vision and life in addition to 401(k).

• Location flexibility between our three hubs in D.C., Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area with 1 WFH day/week.