Research Partnership Manager at Odyssey (Palo Alto, CA)Research Partnership Manager

Odyssey is an AI lab pioneering general world models: causal, multimodal systems that learn to predict and interact with the world over long horizons. This foundational technology promises to revolutionize robotics, science, healthcare, education, gaming, defense, and beyond. Odyssey’s founders previously pioneered the most complex application of physical AI: self-driving cars. They’ve now brought together a world-class research team from DeepMind, Tesla, Waymo, Meta, Apple, and Wayve, who have made significant contributions to language models (DeepMind Gemini), video models (DeepMind Veo), world models (Wayve GAIA), and autonomous systems (Tesla FSD). Odyssey has raised significant venture capital from GV, Amazon, AMD, EQT, NVIDIA, Natural Capital, In-Q-Tel, Elad Gil, Jeff Dean, Guillermo Rauch, Garry Tan, Kyle Vogt, and researchers from OpenAI, DeepMind, MSL, Recursive, and Thinking Machines.

Odyssey is seeking a Research Partnership Manager to serve as the operational engine for our R&D and commercial partnerships. Working closely with Business Development and Product, you are the operational backbone, translating the requirements of our research teams and external partners into concrete delivery plans, ensuring that complex, high-stakes engagements remain on track and aligned with our strategic goals.

The right candidate will be able to manage a high-level of activity across a portfolio of high-priority strategic relationships, drive operational rigor, and serve as a connective layer across business, technical, legal, product, policy, and delivery stakeholders.

• Own partnership delivery timelines, milestones, and cross-team accountabilities.
• Ensure that external deliverables are complementary to internal roadmaps.
• Serve as the primary operational point of contact for external partners.
• Shield Research and Business Development leads from administrative friction, enabling focus on high-level strategy.
• Liaising with Product and internal stakeholders, proactively identify and resolve bottlenecks between internal technical teams and external partners.
• Manage a portfolio of active partnerships, maintaining rigor from onboarding through execution.
• Serve as the institutional source of truth for each engagement, ensuring documentation, meeting hygiene, and alignment across diverse teams.
• You own upfront diligence to define and ensure security requirements are upheld over the course of engagements.

• You are an orchestrator who excels at organizing people and processes to drive results, rather than defining feature sets.
• You have strong interpersonal judgment and can mediate between technical teams and external business stakeholders.
• You are a systems-thinker who builds processes to prevent tasks from falling through the cracks.
• You can synthesize complex research blockers into actionable status updates for Commercialization leadership.
• You bring a background in technical program management, research operations, or technical account management within long-cycle R&D environments.

Our staff is expected to be in office at least three times a week. A lot of our progress comes from working through problems together, and we want you in the room for that.