Business Development Lead, AI Commercialization

Block•Bay Area, CA, United States of America, CA

2d•$164,300 - $297,000•Remote

About The Position

Block is building a new generation of AI-powered products with the potential to create entirely new ways for businesses to operate, engage with customers, and grow. We are looking for a self-starting, experienced business development lead to turn these emerging products into meaningful business. This is a highly entrepreneurial role, and requires someone who has done this before: taken technically complex, early-stage products into the market, secured sophisticated enterprise customers and partners, built and converted pilots, and informed pricing and commercial models for scale. This role requires an incredibly driven business development motion – developing our most important enterprise customers and partners, structuring our earliest commercial engagements, and working closely with Product and Engineering to shape what we build.

Requirements

10+ years of relevant commercial enterprise experience.
Direct, demonstrated experience taking new or emerging technology products from early market entry through commercial scale.
A track record of personally securing lighthouse enterprise customers and strategic partners, structuring pilots and partnerships, and converting them into scaled commercial relationships.
Deep experience selling complex technology to large enterprises and working with sophisticated strategic partners.
Established credibility engaging senior technical, product, business development, and commercial executives.
Experience commercializing AI, data infrastructure, developer platforms, cloud infrastructure, or similarly complex and rapidly evolving technology.
Strong understanding of how enterprises and strategic partners evaluate, pilot, procure, integrate, distribute, and scale emerging technologies.
Strong product judgment and a history of working as a true partner to Product and Engineering.
Experience building a new business inside of a technology company
The ability to operate at both the strategic and execution levels — from informing a market strategy to getting a difficult enterprise deal or strategic partnership across the line.

Responsibilities

Win lighthouse enterprise customers and strategic partners
Source, develop, and close relationships with sophisticated enterprise customers and strategic partners.
Engage with senior executives across technology, product, operations, business development, and commercial organizations
Identify where strategic partnerships can accelerate distribution, unlock new use cases, or create differentiated product capabilities.
Sell products that may still be evolving, creating conviction around the vision while setting appropriate expectations about what exists today.
Build a portfolio of lighthouse customers and partners that provides product validation, commercial proof points, references, distribution, and a foundation for broader adoption.
Build pilots that become scaled commercial relationships
Drive commercial pilots with enterprise customers and partners with clear objectives, success metrics, economics, timelines, and paths to production and expansion.
Own the progression from initial conversation → pilot → production deployment or partnership launch → scaled commercial relationship.
Work directly with customers, partners, Product, and Engineering throughout early implementations.
Distinguish between strategically important market feedback and bespoke requests that should not drive the roadmap.
Use early engagements to rapidly test product-market fit, willingness to pay, partnership models, implementation requirements, and the durability of demand.
Drive partner GTM and own the relationship end to end
Sign and launch partners, and own their success end to end: From pitch, negotiations, deal signature, through launch and optimization.
Partner with the cross-functional team to refine pitch materials, partner marketing motions and operations.
Actively share learnings back with internal stakeholders to refine and optimize the product strategy, while optimizing the partnership for success.
Exercise sound judgment and discretion around executive and cross-functional relationship mapping.