Founding Head of Telco

Job title: Founding Head of Telco

Location: London; 4 days in-office, 1 day wfh

Reports to: Chief Commercial Officer

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Cosine is the UK's frontier AI lab for autonomous software engineering — not another coding assistant, but our own models, agent stack, eval harnesses, and product layer. We build our agent tooling entirely in-house and post-train open-source models to deliver reliable, enterprise-grade coding performance in security-critical settings.

Our offerings can be used as SaaS, deployed on VPC, on-prem or fully air-gapped. Through this flexability, we are able to service large-scale, highly regulated enterprises and industries including defence, financial service and healthcare.

We’re backed by YC and were recently selected for the UK’s sovereign AI programme. The company is at a rare stage: deep technical work, real enterprise pull, and a chance to shape how AI is deployed inside defence, banking, government, and other high-trust environments.

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Own Cosine’s telco engagement and GTM motion from founder-led relationship building into a repeatable commercial engine.

The role exists to build on Cosine’s existing sovereign AI momentum with telecoms, critical national infrastructure operators, and strategic technology partners, turning senior interest into deep institutional relationships, clearly understood priorities, and qualified commercial opportunities.

This is a critical sector-building role: part enterprise sales, part partnerships, part market development, part infrastructure strategy, and part GTM leadership.

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• Own Cosine’s day-to-day engagement with priority telco organisations, including national telecoms operators, managed service providers, network infrastructure providers, and telecoms technology teams.

• Build on Cosine’s existing traction and reputation across sovereign AI, secure deployment, regulated infrastructure, and AI engineering to create senior routes into the right organisations.

• Maintain a clear account map across key telco organisations, including executive sponsors, technology leaders, network engineering teams, enterprise product owners, security stakeholders, procurement teams, and commercial decision-makers.

• Move relationships from broad sovereign AI or infrastructure interest into specific, practical areas where Cosine can create value.

• Develop relationships across multiple divisions, business units, and seniority levels in each target account.

• Engage CIO, CTO, CISO, Chief Digital Officer, network, platform, engineering, enterprise product, security, procurement, strategy, and commercial stakeholders.

• Identify how priorities differ across teams, for example AI compute monetisation, software engineering productivity, customer-facing AI services, secure deployment, network automation, operational resilience, and legacy system modernisation.

• Build enough trust that Cosine becomes part of the strategic conversation around telco AI, not just another vendor selling a developer tool.

• Run structured discovery across telco organisations to understand what they truly care about in sovereign AI, AI coding, and enterprise automation.

• Capture use cases, constraints, buying triggers, objections, deployment requirements, security expectations, procurement routes, partner dependencies, and success metrics.

• Translate telco customer signal into internal intelligence for sales, partnerships, product, research, engineering, marketing, and leadership.

• Build a sector view of where Cosine has the strongest right to win, including priority use cases, highest-intent accounts, likely buyer personas, partner routes, and repeatable commercial narratives.

Priority areas to explore include:

• Sovereign AI coding and software engineering inside telco-controlled infrastructure.

• Helping telcos compete with hyperscalers by offering AI coding capabilities that run on their own infrastructure.

• AI adoption where source code, credentials, operational data, or infrastructure cannot leave the customer’s control boundary.

• Monetisation of GPU, cloud, and sovereign infrastructure investments through AI developer tooling.

• Legacy OSS, BSS, network, billing, provisioning, and internal platform modernisation.

• Software assurance, auditability, testing, review, and governance across high-scale engineering teams.

• Network automation, operational resilience, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure workflows.

• Deployment models across telco cloud, customer VPC, on-prem, sovereign cloud, and air-gapped environments where required.

• Convert relationship-building, technical education, and market development into qualified pipeline opportunities.

• Identify where there is a real business problem, budget owner, technical champion, procurement path, partner route, and reason to act now.

• Shape opportunities into concrete next steps: discovery sessions, technical deep-dives, workshops, pilots, proof-of-concepts, deployment planning, commercial proposals, or partner-led opportunities.

• Work with the wider GTM team to move qualified telco opportunities through the sales cycle.

• Keep a clear view of account status, stakeholder map, open actions, risks, next steps, deployment route, partner involvement, and commercial likelihood.

The role should focus deeply on commercial pull: serious conversations, mapped accounts, live opportunities, pilots, partner routes, and ultimately revenue.

• Work alongside Cosine’s Head of Partnerships to build and manage relationships with the partners that matter in telco: systems integrators, cloud infrastructure partners, managed service providers, hardware/GPU partners, consultancies, and telco technology vendors.

• Identify where partners can create account access, support deployment credibility, provide bid access, or help Cosine become part of broader telco cloud, sovereign AI, or infrastructure transformation programmes.

• Build joint account plans with priority partners where there is a clear telco opportunity.

• Support partner positioning, co-sell motions, marketplace routes, bid strategy, framework access where relevant, and teaming discussions.

• Ensure partner engagement is commercially purposeful, with clear ownership, target accounts, opportunity hypotheses, and follow-up actions.

• Build a clear view of the commercial and technical routes that matter for Cosine in telco.

• Understand where Cosine should pursue direct enterprise engagement, partner-led opportunities, telco cloud productisation, marketplace routes, pilots, internal engineering rollouts, or customer-facing AI offerings delivered through the telco.

• Help shape engagement approaches that speak to telco-specific priorities: infrastructure monetisation, customer retention, sovereign capability, enterprise product differentiation, regulated customer demand, and competition with hyperscalers.

• Use targeted briefings, technical working sessions, account planning, partner conversations, and high-quality written materials to progress opportunities.

• Work with legal, commercial, partnerships, product, engineering, and leadership to ensure telco engagement is commercially useful and technically credible.

• Help define what the telco GTM motion should become as Cosine scales.

• Build the early playbook for account selection, stakeholder mapping, discovery, qualification, telco cloud positioning, partner-led entry, pilot design, deployment planning, and commercial progression.

• Help recruit, onboard, and develop future GTM hires focused on telco and infrastructure providers.

• Establish the operating cadence for the sector: account reviews, pipeline tracking, partner follow-up, customer insight capture, pilot tracking, and internal reporting.

• Work closely with SDRs, partnerships, marketing, founders, enterprise sales, and the Head of Partnerships to make telco a repeatable vertical.

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• Multi-threaded relationships established across the most important telco accounts.

• The three top priority telco accounts are established, with account maps, stakeholder coverage, deployment hypotheses, partner strategy, and business cases set out.

• A structured view of telco sovereign AI use cases, buyer priorities, objections, deployment models, partner routes, and buying triggers.

• Qualified opportunities progressing into discovery, technical deep-dives, pilots, partner motions, deployment planning, or commercial proposals.

• Clear working rhythm with the Head of Partnerships on telco ecosystem partners, SI relationships, infrastructure partners, and co-sell routes.

• A clear telco GTM playbook that future hires can build from.

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• Number of priority telco accounts actively engaged.

• Number of senior stakeholder relationships built across target accounts.

• Number of multi-threaded accounts with executive, technical, commercial, cloud, security, and procurement coverage.

• Quality of customer insight captured on sovereign AI priorities, infrastructure requirements, deployment constraints, and use cases.

• Qualified telco opportunities created.

• Discovery sessions, technical deep-dives, pilots, partner motions, or proposals initiated.

• Pipeline generated or influenced.

• Conversion of reputation and senior engagement into live commercial next steps.

• Evidence that Cosine is becoming a serious strategic partner in target telco accounts.

• Priority SI, cloud, infrastructure, and telco technology partner relationships mapped and actively managed alongside the Head of Partnerships.

• Joint account plans created with the most relevant partners.

• Co-sell routes, bid opportunities, marketplace routes, or partner-led entry points identified.

• Clear evidence that partner engagement is creating access, credibility, or commercial opportunity.

• Telco account map and stakeholder tracker built and maintained.

• Partner and ecosystem map built and maintained with clear ownership and next steps.

• Repeatable cadence established for account reviews, partner follow-up, pilot tracking, and sector reporting.

• Future telco GTM hiring profile defined.

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Cosine will support the role with:

• Founder access for senior meetings and strategic accounts.

• Existing reputation, warm routes, and credibility from Cosine’s sovereign AI work.

• Support from the Head of Partnerships on partner strategy, SI engagement, telco ecosystem mapping, and partner-led account entry.

• Support from partnerships, marketing, product, engineering, ML, and legal where needed.

• Enterprise-grade materials on sovereign AI, deployment models, security, product architecture, telco use cases, infrastructure monetisation, and ROI.

• Budget for targeted customer and partner engagement where appropriate.

• Clear internal ownership for technical escalation, pilot scoping, legal/procurement, deployment planning, partner support, and product feedback.

• A single accountable line manager for commercial direction and prioritisation.

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This role is likely to suit someone who:

• Has sold, partnered, or built relationships inside telecoms, cloud infrastructure, managed services, critical national infrastructure, or enterprise technology providers.

• Understands how telcos buy, partner, and productise new technology, including the role of cloud, network, security, procurement, enterprise product, and infrastructure teams.

• Can credibly engage senior stakeholders while still doing the account-by-account follow-up work themselves.

• Understands complex enterprise and telco buying cycles and knows how to move from relationship to qualified opportunity.

• Is comfortable working with SIs, infrastructure providers, and technology partners without losing sight of Cosine’s own commercial interest.

• Understands the strategic pressure telcos face from hyperscalers, especially around AI infrastructure, developer tooling, customer workloads, and enterprise cloud spend.

• Is comfortable with ambiguity, sector-building, and founder-led GTM rather than inheriting a mature sales machine.

• Thinks commercially, writes clearly, and can build account plans, briefing notes, proposals, partner materials, and internal decision papers without heavy supervision.

• Has the judgement to know when a conversation is just interesting and when it is becoming real pipeline.

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The Founding Head of Telco should make Cosine impossible to ignore for the right telecoms and infrastructure organisations.

They should build on Cosine’s sovereign AI momentum, understand what telcos actually need from AI, build the relationships required to be taken seriously, and work closely with the Head of Partnerships to create credible routes through SIs, cloud partners, infrastructure providers, and telco technology ecosystems.

Over time, they should turn that trust into qualified commercial opportunities, while building the team, playbook, partner motion, and operating cadence that make telco a repeatable Cosine vertical rather than a founder-led experiment.

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• Opportunity to sell a genuinely differentiated product into mission-critical defence and national security environments

• Meaningful early equity with real upside

• Direct impact on product direction and go-to-market strategy

• Small, elite team with high standards and strong technical depth

• What you can expect:

  • Competitive salary, benchmarked to the market

  • Equity / share options, so you share in the upside you help create

  • 30 days’ holiday + bank holidays

  • Work hard in the office, collaborate closely, and switch off properly

  • Dog-friendly office - bring your dog to work

  • Weekly team breakfast & lunch

  • Monthly socials

  • Pension

  • High-quality equipment to do your best work

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We’re an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse backgrounds and encourage applications from everyone who meets the role requirements, even if you don’t tick every box.