Business Development Lead, Embodied AI

Posted One Month Ago
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San Francisco, CA, USA
Hybrid
176K-230K Annually
Entry level
Artificial Intelligence • Computer Vision • Machine Learning • Software
The Role
Build and manage the go-to-market motion for an Embodied AI product. Responsibilities include mapping the robotics market, generating qualified pipeline, developing customer relationships, qualifying use cases, shaping commercial models, and closing early technical-product deals. The role partners closely with product and company leadership to provide customer insights, establish product-market fit, structure evaluations, negotiate agreements, and support successful handoffs.
Summary Generated by Built In

About Niantic Spatial

Niantic Spatial makes the physical world computable, helping people and machines collaborate safely by aligning how they understand reality.

Robots trained in simulation often fail in the real places they’re deployed. We’re helping to fix that. Our team spent decades mapping the world at Google Maps, Google Earth and Niantic Labs, and we’re now applying that expertise to building the scalable real-to-sim stack for embodied AI.

Our research team publishes at CVPR and ECCV, producing work the rest of the field builds on. That research is already in production. Our customers range from teams running robot fleets at scale in cities to those defining the state of the art in training policies on real-world data, and we partner with companies at the center of the ecosystem. We’re privileged to work with some of the most advanced embodied AI teams in the world.

The role

You’ll be the first dedicated seller for our Embodied AI group, working directly with the GM. You’ll find the customers, win them and shape the motion as you go – who we target, what we offer and how we price it. There’s no quota to start. Rather, you’ll be measured on qualified pipeline, sharp customer insight and closing business we can deliver.

This is for you if

  • You’d rather spend the day with customers than in internal meetings.

  • You’ve been the first or second seller somewhere before, and you liked building the plane while flying it.

  • You get curious when a conversation turns technical, and you can tell when to hand it to an engineer.

  • You don’t keep dead deals alive to make the pipeline look better.

This isn’t for you if you need inbound leads, a finished playbook or a finished product to do your best work.

What you’ll do

  • Build pipeline. Map who’s building, raising and deploying, decide who we pursue and when, and get in the room through your network, outreach and events.

  • Run discovery. Find out what customers are trying to do, where their workflow breaks and what that costs them. Bring it back to the GM and Product.

  • Close. Own deals from first conversation to signature: proposal, pricing, negotiation and handoff.

  • Shape the offer. Use what you hear to sharpen our packaging, pricing and positioning.

  • Give before you ask. Work with Marketing to be useful to accounts we can’t serve yet.

In your first six months, you’ll

  • Build a qualified pipeline across priority segments.

  • Close deals you sourced yourself.

  • Propose changes to how we package and price, based on what customers tell you.

You must have

  • Built your own pipeline and closed early deals. You’ve sourced opportunities from scratch and personally closed multiple paid contracts while the product, buyer and pricing were still evolving.

  • Credibility with technical buyers. You’ve ramped quickly on unfamiliar technical domains and sold to engineers and researchers. You know where your depth ends.

  • Owned pricing and proposals. You’ve scoped deals, set pricing and written proposals yourself. If you’ve only sold using set templates for each stage of the cycle, this role won’t be a fit.

  • Run real discovery alongside Product and Engineering. You work with them to close the gap between what customers need and what we build, and you still sell what exists today rather than waiting for the perfect product.

Plus if you’ve

  • Been a founding or early AE at a technical startup.

  • Earned promotion at a company known for great sellers.

  • Sold usage-based, API or developer products.

  • Worked in or sold into robotics companies.

  • Built a network in physical AI.

Why join

  • You’ll help build the sales motion rather than inherit it. That covers pricing, proposals and the playbook.

  • You’ll help define a new category, selling to some of the most technical buyers in AI.

  • You’ll work directly with the GM and the technical team, with no layers in between.

  • It’s hard. The product is early, the market moves fast, and you’ll often be working out what to sell as well as selling it. If that sounds like fun to you, this role is likely to be a fit.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary range of $175,500 to $230,000. Compensation also includes an annual bonus, equity, and a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k), and more.

Location & Work Model

This role is based in our San Francisco office, with three days per week in office.

Inclusive Application

We know the strongest candidates don't always tick every box. If you're excited about this role and believe you could do it well, we encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn't match every qualification listed - you may be exactly who we're looking for.

Equal Opportunity

Niantic Spatial is an equal opportunity employer. Individuals seeking employment at Niantic Spatial are considered without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, age, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), marital status, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military or veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected category under applicable laws. Niantic Spatial will also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in accordance with applicable laws. Please contact your recruiter if you want to request an accommodation for the job application or interview process.

Candidate Privacy

I understand that by submitting my job application, the information I provide as part of that application will be used in accordance with Niantic Spatial's Privacy Notice for Job Applicants and Candidates https://www.nianticspatial.com/applicant-privacy-notice.

Skills Required

  • Existing relationships with founders, engineering leaders, or buyers in robotics, embodied AI, or related infrastructure and tooling companies
  • Track record of personally winning early customers for a technical product while the use case, buyer, or commercial approach was still developing
  • Experience shaping customer deals, including scope, proof of value, commercial terms, and transition from evaluation to paid adoption
  • Experience securing customer budget and engineering commitments
  • Evidence of changing targeting, offerings, or sales approach based on customer learning
  • Credibility with technical buyers and ability to discuss simulation, training data, evaluation, reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and sim-to-real transfer
  • Bachelor's degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience
  • Experience turning pilots into sustained usage, renewals, or expansion
  • Experience making early customer wins repeatable across accounts
  • Experience partnering with or selling within the NVIDIA robotics ecosystem
  • Experience selling to defense or industrial robotics teams
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The Company
182 Employees
Year Founded: 2025

What We Do

Niantic Spatial is building a living model of the world for machines, developing a geospatial AI model to understand and digitally map the physical world through spatial foundation and large geospatial models.

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