Director, Business Development (Remote within USA)
About The Position
As a Director, Business Development on the Partnerships team, you’ll lead DuckDuckGo’s most complex AI partnerships and drive strategy — sourcing, negotiating and scaling high-impact deals with model providers, AI infrastructure partners, and emerging players in the agentic ecosystem. These partnerships don't have a playbook yet — you'll be structuring deals where the product, the economics, and the strategic value need to be figured out together, working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and Finance to make them real. You'll manage a portfolio of competing and complementary AI provider relationships, forging partnerships with leading organizations while navigating the strategic tradeoffs of a market where pricing, capabilities, and competitive dynamics shift quarterly. Your work will directly shape how Duck.ai and our AI-powered products evolve and reach millions of users — and how a privacy-first search company competes in the AI landscape.
Requirements
- 10+ years of Business Development, Partnerships, or Strategic Partnerships experience.
- 5+ years of cross-functional leadership on partnership projects and teams, including legal and engineering.
- Experience with consumer internet or user-facing software business with an understanding of the AI/LLM ecosystem and how AI capabilities are being integrated into consumer products.
- Significant experience leading complex product partnerships end-to-end — from identifying the opportunity through deal close and beyond. These should be partnerships where you've created something new together and navigated real product and technical complexity, not sales deals or API licensing.
- Self-sufficiency on the commercial details — you don’t wait for someone else to draft terms, build financial models, or pressure-test deal structures — you can handle these details on your own while partnering with Legal and Finance.
- Experience managing a portfolio of complex strategic partner relationships and an understanding of the tradeoffs that come with balancing competing and complementary providers.
- You build trust quickly with internal teams, partners, and stakeholders you've never worked with before. You're collaborative by default and decisive when it counts.
- Located in the US.
Responsibilities
- Figuring out further partnerships that could enhance our Duck.ai and Search Assist offerings
- Creating new distribution channels to help grow our AI related services
Benefits
- $243,800 USD annually and stock options.
- Eligibility for company-sponsored health benefits is limited to team members based in the United States.
- Our Team Member Support Guide explains how we prioritize your wellbeing including paid parental leave, office setup, and co-working allowances.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
Education Level
No Education Listed
