Ventures Associate - Enterprise & AI

Plug and Play Tech Center•West Windsor Township, NJ

40d

About The Position

We’re expanding our Enterprise & AI Ventures team and hiring a technical Associate who can evaluate complex AI/enterprise software products and translate that diligence into clear investment decisions. You’ll build theses, run structured technical + market diligence on early-stage companies, and work closely with enterprise partners to understand real buyer needs and validate startup solutions. This role is ideal for someone with an engineering mindset who wants to operate at the intersection of AI systems, enterprise workflows, and venture investing.

Requirements

Strong technical foundation: CS/engineering background or equivalent experience shipping software.
Comfort evaluating modern AI systems and data stacks (e.g., LLM apps, RAG, fine-tuning, evals, vector DBs, warehouses/ETL, observability).
Ability to ask informed architecture/security questions and validate product claims
Demonstrated analytical skills: can size markets and synthesize complex information
Excellent written and verbal communication—able to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences
Genuine curiosity about startups, venture capital, and emerging technologies

Nice To Haves

Experience at a startup or a tech firm in product engineering, solutions engineering, ML engineering, security engineering, or technical PM
Experience with technical content creation (blog posts, documentation, technical writing) or contributions to open source or side projects that show builder mentality

Responsibilities

Build and refine investment theses across Enterprise AI and adjacent infrastructure (data, security, devtools, agentic systems).
Source and evaluate early-stage companies through a mix of inbound, outbound, and ecosystem channels.
Conduct technical diligence: architecture reviews, data infrastructure evaluation, and scalability analysis
Track emerging technologies, competitive landscapes, and venture activity across your focus areas
Conduct structured interviews with corporate partners to understand technology gaps and innovation priorities
Translate enterprise needs into actionable sourcing + diligence criteria.
Facilitate introductions between startups/scaleups and corporate partners
Support executive briefings, demo days, and enterprise matchmaking.
Conduct structured product + architecture reviews (data flow, model approach, deployment model, integration pattern, scalability).
Assess feasibility and differentiation: “is this real?”, “what breaks at scale?”, “what’s defensible?”
Engage in technical conversations with founders to assess team capabilities and product sophistication
Maintain market maps, startup databases, and competitive intelligence in your focus areas
Produce research reports, investment memos, and market analyses for internal and external audiences
Contribute to thought leadership through blog posts, whitepapers, or speaking engagements