Business Development Director

About The Role

Lead the development and execution of OpenRouter's comprehensive partner strategy to accelerate AI adoption and revenue growth.

• Build strategic platform and product partnerships with complementary AI/ML companies to drive technical integrations, expand distribution, and accelerate mutual customer adoption.
• Track partner contributions to customer acquisition, product usage, and expansion across the full partnership lifecycle to drive partnership revenue and growth targets.
• Analyze the AI/ML ecosystem to identify priority partners, competitive dynamics, and emerging opportunities while maintaining expertise in AI infrastructure and partnership trends.
• Navigate multi-sided platform dynamics by coordinating across internal teams, technology partners, and customers to structure agreements that create mutual value.
• Negotiate complex partnership agreements, including technical integrations, data privacy terms, GTM commitments, and commercial structure, while building scalable onboarding frameworks.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Legal to prioritize partner integrations, develop co-marketing initiatives, and balance partner needs with product strategy.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in partnerships, business development, or strategic alliances, with at least 3-5 years in a leadership role building partnership programs from scratch.
• Experience managing strategic partnerships with leading technology providers (e.g., AI model providers, API platforms, SaaS companies), including developing technical integrations, API distribution strategies, and product-led growth (PLG) or sales-led growth (SLG) initiatives.
• Proven track record scaling consumption-based or usage-based partnership models (API platforms, developer tools, infrastructure) with measurable impact on product adoption and revenue ($10M+ in influenced consumption/revenue).
• Strong commercial and legal acumen with experience negotiating complex agreements involving data governance, SLAs, consumption economics, and technical integration commitments.
• Technical background or deep fluency with API platforms, developer tooling, and cloud infrastructure—able to engage credibly with engineering teams on integration architecture, authentication patterns, and data flows.
• Strategic thinker who can balance long-term ecosystem building with short-term execution, comfortable with ambiguity and building from zero to one.