Director, Business Development (Remote within USA)

Your Team and Role

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, emerging players in the agentic ecosystem, and work on related projects.

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.

About You

• 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.
• Likely located in the US.

What Projects Might Look Like

• 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.

Compensation

$243,800 USD annually and stock options. Compensation is transparent across the organization, and all team members within the same professional level and global region receive the same compensation.

Hiring Process

This program does not extend to team members located in other countries, such as Canada or the UK. Our Team Member Support Guide explains how we prioritize your wellbeing including paid parental leave, office setup, and co-working allowances.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

DuckDuckGo provides equal work opportunities to all team members and applicants, and it prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, caste, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by our policies or federal, state, or local laws.

Disclosure Statement: Use of AI in Hiring Process

We use AI to flag potentially fraudulent applications, analyze and summarize applicants’ experience, interviews, and project performance, and help streamline our selection process.