--- title: 'Business Development Associate at Samba' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/business-development-associate-samba-london-h9vmkn2smnj1' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-07' --- # Business Development Associate at Samba - **Company:** Samba - **Location:** London, United Kingdom - **Employment:** internship - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-07-30 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/sambatv/218a674b-1011-4250-84c7-3ea5bdd84ab5 ## Job description Samba is a media intelligence company. We know what the world is watching, reading, and thinking about — in real time, at scale, across every screen. Our data exists with the consent of over a billion people, organized into the most complete picture of consumer attention ever built. The biggest brands in the world use that picture to make smarter decisions. We think it’s the most interesting data asset on the planet, because it’s the most culturally relevant. ## About The Role You sit at the centre of Samba's commercial partnerships function, supporting the origination, evaluation, negotiation, and ongoing management of complex partnerships — initially across EMEA, with scope to grow into deals beyond it — through which Samba's data, products, and capabilities are monetised with third-party platforms and technologies. Working closely with senior leadership on Samba's most commercially significant deals, you build real expertise in deal structuring, commercial negotiation, partner economics, and data licensing. You likely bring 2+ years in investment banking, private equity, M&A, corporate development, or consulting — a background that builds the analytical discipline these deals require and prepares you for the uncomfortable stages of a negotiation: conflicting incentives, incomplete information, and difficult counterparties. That means transaction-grade analytical discipline applied to commercial partnerships — how to structure a partnership, evaluate a licensing arrangement, value the capabilities each party contributes, and reach a defensible view on whether a partnership is worth pursuing at all — along with fluency in financial modelling and a real interest in the media and technology sectors. Samba is an AI-first company — the AI and agentic ecosystem is central to our next wave of monetisation, and you help shape the commercial models that capture it. What You'll Do: - Source & Structure Partnerships: Support the origination, evaluation, structuring, and execution of partnerships across the media, technology, and data analytics sectors, initially with an EMEA focus — working closely with senior leadership on deals with platforms (DSPs, SSPs, ad servers, CDPs, and data marketplaces), OEMs, advertisers, publishers, and data partners. - Design Commercial Models: Prepare business cases to evaluate business development opportunities and design the commercial model appropriate to each engagement — fixed or minimum-guaranteed fees, usage- or performance-based structures, value-exchange arrangements in which each party contributes capability rather than cash, or a hybrid of these — modelling the multi-year economics of each option; the most effective structure is often not the most obvious one, so creativity and lateral thinking matter here. - Monetise the AI Ecosystem: Identify and evaluate opportunities to monetise Samba's data and capabilities within the AI and agentic ecosystem — AI platforms, model developers, and agent-based products — and support the development of commercial models for those opportunities. - Build Deal Materials: Create partner-facing decks, term sheets, and deal summaries for strategic discussions with prospective and existing partners. - Run Diligence & Benchmarking: Conduct commercial and financial diligence on prospective partners — reviewing financial statements, key performance metrics, product maturity, and business models — to assess partner viability, the value of the capability each partner brings, and whether the combined economics justify a partnership, and maintain competitive benchmarking of comparable partner and vendor terms in market so that terms offered to Samba are tested against alternatives rather than accepted at face value. - Negotiate & Coordinate: Support the negotiation of partnership terms across scope of licence and intellectual property (IP) ownership, usage rights and permitted-use restrictions, pricing and commercial structure, service levels and performance remedies, and liability, termination, and exit — coordinating with finance, legal, privacy, product, and engineering teams to support deal execution and partnership implementation while protecting Samba's commercial and compliance position. - Know the Market: Conduct industry research and competitive analysis to identify emerging trends, potential partners, and strategic opportunities across the streaming, advertising technology, and AI landscape, and develop and maintain relationships with existing and prospective partners — attending industry conferences and networking events to surface opportunities and maintain market awareness. - Work AI-First: Apply AI and agentic tooling to your own workflow — research, diligence, modelling, drafting, and pipeline management — to improve both the speed and quality of your output, and maintain partnership pipeline tracking and status reporting for ongoing business development activities. ## What You Bring - 2+ years of experience in investment banking, private equity, M&A, corporate development, management consulting, or a commercial role in media, advertising technology, or data — you have worked on complex deals, you understand how they come together, and you are able to work through the difficult and uncomfortable stages of a negotiation. - Strong analytical foundations — proficiency in Excel and the ability to build and maintain models assessing deal economics, valuation, and returns — paired with the creativity to think laterally about commercial structure and the confidence to propose an unconventional model and explain why it is the right one. - Comfort with AI and experience using it in your own role to improve performance and outcomes — Samba is an AI-first company and looks for that instinct in every hire; you can get up to speed quickly on how AI and agentic tooling are changing the media, advertising, and data landscape and where the commercial opportunities sit for a company holding data assets like Samba's. Experience in this sector is not required, but the ability to learn it quickly is. - Demonstrated ability to synthesise complex financial and business information and communicate findings clearly and concisely to senior leadership, with excellent written and verbal communication skills and experience creating executive-level presentations. - Comfort working with contracts and commercial terms — able to read a term sheet or master services agreement (MSA) and identify what is missing, what is one-sided, and what would constrain Samba commercially in future, even if you are not the lawyer in the room — and treating privacy and data compliance as a design consideration rather than a box to tick, with awareness of the regulatory and industry frameworks governing the use of consumer data in advertising and measurement. - Curious and quick to learn — you want to understand Samba's products deeply and stay close to what's happening in the TV, streaming, programmatic, and AI landscape. - Highly organised and detail-oriented — a self-starter who works independently with minimal supervision, contributes positively to the culture as a team player, manages multiple workstreams simultaneously in a fast-paced environment, and is willing to travel as needed for partner meetings and deal execution. - Bachelor's degree in Finance, Economics, or Business, or equivalent practical experience. ## About Samba ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Samba (formerly Samba TV) is a media intelligence company that uses AI and first-party deterministic data from 1.5 billion people to power cross-screen TV and digital advertising measurement, targeting, and analytics for the world's largest brands, publishers, and platforms. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series B) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2008 - **Founders**: Ashwin Navin (Co-founder & CEO), Alvir Navin (Co-founder & COO) ## Core Business - **Primary Industry**: Media Intelligence / Advertising Technology / Data & Analytics - **Target Customers**: B2B — primarily Enterprise (global brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms like Disney, Havas Media, and "the vast majority of top global brands") - **Mission Statement**: Unite TV, digital, and behavioral data through AI to power faster, more accurate media decisions. ## Products & Services - **Samba Analytics**: Independent cross-screen measurement using first-party data for deduplicated reach, frequency, and performance outcomes. Allows optimization of campaigns while they are still in-flight. - **Samba Audiences**: Exclusive audience segments and Private Marketplaces (PMPs) built from Samba's deterministic cross-screen signals for effective targeting. - **Samba Knowledge Graph**: AI-powered mapping of interests, behaviors, and purchase intent, linking content to 1.5 billion real people, devices, and households. - **Samba ID**: A universal identity solution linking content to real people and devices across screens. - **Samba AI**: Contextually analyzes and indexes all media content, including brand logo detection on TV. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed - **Total Funding**: $75.7M USD across 9 rounds - Last known round: Series B ($30M, June 2017, led by Union Grove Venture Partners and Disney Accelerator) - Other notable rounds: Series A ($7M, February 2012, led by August Capital) - **Key Metric**: Owns first-party TV and web data for 1.5 billion people globally. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: August Capital, Union Grove Venture Partners, Disney Accelerator. Strategic clients include Disney, Havas Media, and "every platform and publisher you need." - **Growth Signals**: Acquired Semasio in 2024, becoming the only provider owning both TV and web first-party data. Rebranded from "Samba TV" to "Samba" in 2026. Global workforce of 251 employees (+20.1% YoY growth). Operations span 6 countries with 13 offices. ## Competitive Advantages - **First-Party Data Moat**: Nearly two decades of proprietary, deterministic data from smart TVs (24 brands, 48M devices) and web (1.5B people), creating a unique and un-copyable dataset. - **Full-Funnel Integration**: The only provider to combine TV and web first-party data (after acquiring Semasio), offering planning, measurement, and activation in one platform. - **AI-Powered Knowledge Graph**: Goes beyond traditional media measurement by mapping interests, behaviors, and purchase intent, enabling contextual analysis without relying on third-party cookies. ## Strategic Focus - **Platform Expansion**: Evolving from a TV data provider into a comprehensive "media intelligence" company (rebranded in 2026). - **Cross-Screen Unification**: Connecting TV and digital data to provide a complete view of audience behavior across all screens. - **AI & Contextual Intelligence**: Deepening investment in AI for content analysis, brand detection, and predictive audience targeting. - **Global Scale**: Operating across six continents and expanding direct partnerships with major platforms and publishers. ## Why Work Here - **Founder-Led Culture**: Described as having "startup intensity and enterprise impact," with a "culture that values ownership over hierarchy and outcomes over optics." - **Global & Distributed**: Teams span San Francisco (HQ), New York, London, Hamburg, Sydney, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Warsaw, Taipei, and Amsterdam. Officed with a global, collaborative ethos. - **Engineering & Data-First**: Ships products that "touch billions of signals daily." A strong emphasis on data science, engineering, and product roles. - **Compensation & Benefits**: Competitive base salary, equity participation, performance bonuses, generous parental leave, flexible PTO, annual learning budgets, home office stipend, and best-in-class hardware. - **Culture Values** (from company career page): Determined & Resilient, Self-Aware, Naturally Curious, Low Ego, Results Oriented. - **Employee Rating**: 3.9/5.0 on LinkedIn (172 reviews), with Work-Life Balance at 3.9, Compensation at 3.8, and Culture at 3.8. ## Sources 1. [samba.com](https://samba.com/about-samba) — About Samba / Company History 2. [samba.com](https://samba.com/careers) — Careers Page / Culture & Benefits 3. [samba.com](https://samba.com/) — Home Page / Product & Platform Overview 4. [linkedin.com/company/sambatv](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sambatv) — LinkedIn Profile (Company Details, Size, Financials) 5. [jobs.lever.co/sambatv](https://jobs.lever.co/sambatv) — Lever Careers Page (Open Roles) ## Other roles at Samba - [Senior Director - Data Platform and Cloud Services](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-director-data-platform-and-cloud-services-samba-warsaw-vnpe99twtfcg) — Warsaw, Poland - [Senior Ontologist - Knowledge Graph & Identity](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ontologist-knowledge-graph-identity-samba-warsaw-maadbvvzpzgv) — Warsaw, Poland - [Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-samba-amsterdam-cq236q9e9445) — Amsterdam, Netherlands - [Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-samba-warsaw-11hwb6kajyaz) — Warsaw, Poland - [Software Development Engineer in Test](https://feeny.ai/job/software-development-engineer-in-test-samba-porto-6qf6nra7fhpa) — Porto, Portugal - [Associate Measurement Partner](https://feeny.ai/job/associate-measurement-partner-samba-london-yknw975zv4zy) — London, United Kingdom - [Programmatic Account Manager - German Speaking](https://feeny.ai/job/programmatic-account-manager-german-speaking-samba-london-afavw00gcd6v) — London, United Kingdom - [Full Stack Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-samba-san-francisco-5fr298dp4qwq) — San Francisco, CA - [Workplace Experience Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/workplace-experience-coordinator-samba-new-york-city-zbwn6na20a0g) — New York City, NY - [Principal Engineer, Architecture — Audiences & Measurement](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-engineer-architecture-audiences-measurement-samba-austin-97bw5v1r7h3d) — Austin, TX