--- title: 'Strategic Partnerships Lead at Factory' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-partnerships-lead-factory-san-francisco-h0twwb28wz73' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-13' --- # Strategic Partnerships Lead at Factory - **Company:** Factory - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Posted:** 2026-04-10 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-13 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/factory/6256f010-b40e-4d3e-a05a-091faf5e878b ## Job description ## About Factory Our mission is to create a world where software builds and improves itself. We build the platform for self-improving software development, helping the world's largest enterprise engineering teams turn their organizations into autonomous software factories. Customers including Nvidia, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Palo Alto Networks, Adobe, and T-Mobile run Factory to ship code, review PRs, run tests, and deploy continuously - getting smarter with every cycle. In 2026, we raised $200M at a $5B valuation, bringing our total funding to over $400M. We are backed by world-class investors and operators including Khosla Ventures, Sequoia, Blackstone, Ali Ghodsi (CEO of Databricks), and Frank Slootman (Former CEO of Snowflake). ## About the Role The Strategic Partnerships Lead will define and grow Factory’s most critical relationships across technology, enterprise and hyperscaler partnerships. In this role, you will create one-of-a-kind strategic partnerships across the industry, define a comprehensive partnerships strategy that drives material impact for the business and serve as the deal lead negotiating partnerships end-to-end. This is a high impact role and you will be a founding member of our exceptional business development team. The ideal candidate is a high-agency partnerships leader with AI-native expertise and proven track record designing, negotiating and delivering high-impact deals and partnerships for fast-growing technology companies. You can deftly flex between engaging C-suite executives at large enterprises and leading cross-functional efforts with engineering, marketing, product and design internally. You bring sharp analytical skills, data-driven decision-making and killer instincts to the role, while maintaining exceptional relationships and credibility with industry stakeholders. ## What you will do and achieve - Define, build and lead a portfolio of strategic partnerships aligned with Factory's objectives and long-term vision, including key relationships with AI frontier labs, technology platforms and hyperscalers. - Own the strategic partnership roadmap with clear milestones, timelines, and ownership for performance (e.g., GTM, product innovation, revenue growth). - Prove out first-of-a-kind partnerships, then build the team to scale. - Continuously analyze the market landscape to identify opportunities for new partnerships, expanding existing partnerships and driving new initiatives. - Execute partnership deals from partnership design to commercial terms and deal negotiation to renewal and expansion - Serve as the face of Factory with key stakeholders, evangelizing and educating the market on the Factory platform ## Key Elements of the Role Deal Strategy & Negotiation - Define and negotiate the commercial, product, marketing and operational business terms to deliver first-of-a-kind partnerships and build scalable partner programs - Take ownership of the expansion and renewal strategy for key partnerships - Drive stakeholder alignment internally and externally to complete complex transactions Cross-Functional Leadership - Develop a deep understanding of Factory's products, ecosystem, and strategic priorities. - Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Revenue, Research and Deployment teams to design and deliver on priority partnerships. - Work with Legal and Finance to oversee contracts, compliance, and renewals. - Partner with Marketing and Communications teams to drive joint go-to-market initiatives, co-marketing campaigns, and product launches. Operational Excellence - Track, analyze, and report on partnership performance metrics, providing actionable insights to leadership. - Maintain accurate documentation of agreements, performance data, and key communications. - Drive internal team updates (e.g., weekly updates, executive briefs) - Identify and proactively resolve operational challenges that could impact partner success. - Ensure all partnerships align with company strategy and deliver measurable value. ## Qualifications - 6-8+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, or strategic alliances within the technology sector — ideally at companies where partnerships were critical during hyper growth. - Demonstrated success in managing and growing complex, high-impact partnerships across AI, cloud, or enterprise platform ecosystems. - Experience in high-growth startup or fast-paced technology environments. - Strong cross-functional operating skills with experience working alongside product, engineering, legal, finance, and GTM teams to execute complex initiatives. - Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to leverage data to drive strategic decisions. - Outstanding communication, negotiation, and executive relationship-building skills with the ability to engage at the C-suite level. - Strong bias for action and the ability to operate both independently and as part of cross-functional teams. - Self-directed and adaptable, comfortable operating in fast-moving environments with evolving priorities. - Consulting, investment banking, MBA, product-to-partnerships transitions, chief of staff, or government affairs backgrounds are a plus. Experience at companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Ramp, or similar hypergrowth organizations is a plus. ## About Factory ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Factory is an AI research lab building autonomous software development agents ("Droids") to automate and optimize the entire software development lifecycle. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series C) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Matan Grinberg (CEO & Co-Founder), Eno Reyes (CTO & Co-Founder) ## Core Business - Primary industry/industries: Artificial Intelligence, Software Development, Autonomous Agents - Target customers: Enterprise engineering organizations (B2B) - Mission or purpose statement: "Bring Autonomy to Software Engineering" ## Products & Services - **[Droid]**: An autonomous software development agent that performs real engineering work across IDEs, CLI, and CI/CD environments. Handles refactors, migrations, debugging, incident response, and feature development in large codebases. Operates through a model-agnostic architecture and supports long-running processes, structured planning, and verified outputs such as PRs and deployments. - **[Factory Router]**: A product that automatically selects the right AI model for each coding task, cutting costs 20-25% while maintaining frontier model performance. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: $1.5 billion (as of early 2026, per Series C announcement) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2) - **Total Funding**: $220M [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2) - **Latest Funding Round**: $150M Series C (raised ~2 months ago as of July 2026) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2) - **Notable Investors**: Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, NEA, Abstract, MANTIS Venture Capital, 20VC [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2). Board members include AI veteran Lila Tretikov (NEA Partner) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2). - **Notable Customers**: NVIDIA, Morgan Stanley, EY, Palo Alto Networks, RBC, Revolut, Adobe, MongoDB [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2) - **Notable Advisors**: Ali Ghodsi (CEO & Co-founder, Databricks), Aaron Levie (CEO, Box), Dev Ittycheria (CEO, MongoDB), Nikesh Arora (CEO, Palo Alto Networks), Frank Slootman (Former CEO, Snowflake), Michael Ovitz (Co-founder, CAA) [factory.ai](https://factory.ai/company) - **Growth Signals**: Rapid enterprise adoption moving beyond experimentation; appointed Marcello Gallo as CRO (formerly CRO at Sigma and Moveworks, senior sales leadership at MongoDB) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2); appointed Madison Faulkner as Head of Strategy [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2); Headcount growing rapidly (+4% monthly on LinkedIn) [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/factory-hq) ## Competitive Advantages - **Model-Agnostic Architecture**: Factory's Droids are not tied to a single AI model, allowing them to use the best model for each task and switch as the landscape evolves. The Factory Router product further optimizes cost and performance by intelligently routing tasks. - **Deep Integration**: Agents work natively within existing developer tools (IDEs, CLI, CI/CD), meaning teams don't need to change their workflows to adopt Factory. - **Enterprise-First Focus**: The company is building for large-scale engineering operations with production-grade reliability, security, and control, as evidenced by their customer list (NVIDIA, Morgan Stanley, etc.). - **Top-Tier Talent & Advisory**: The team hails from companies like Nuro, Glean, Applied Intuition, Scale AI, MongoDB, and Sourcegraph, and is advised by some of the most prominent leaders in enterprise software. - **Strong Backing**: Backed by top-tier venture capital firms (Sequoia, Lux, NEA) with a $1.5B valuation, providing significant resources and credibility. ## Strategic Focus - **Enterprise Hyper-Growth**: Scaling go-to-market with the appointment of a seasoned CRO to drive adoption among large enterprises. - **Agent-Native Development**: Championing the shift from AI-assisted coding to fully autonomous agents that own and execute complex engineering tasks. - **Cost Optimization**: Products like Factory Router demonstrate a focus on making AI-powered development cost-effective at scale. - **Platform Ownership**: Enabling enterprises to own their "software factory" with a flexible, model-agnostic platform. ## Why Work Here - **Mission-Driven**: The opportunity to "Build the tool you've always dreamed of using" and shape the next era of software engineering [factory.ai](https://factory.ai/). - **Talent Density**: The company emphasizes being a "lean and talent-dense team" that values ownership and autonomy [factory.ai](https://factory.ai/). - **On-Site Culture**: Employees work from physical offices five days a week, fostering deep collaboration. Offices are in San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; and London, England [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/factory-factoryai). - **Comprehensive Benefits**: Fully covered medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees; 401(k) and Flexible Savings Account; daily catered lunches and dinners; on-site gym; desk setup stipend [factory.ai](https://factory.ai/). - **World-Class Team**: Opportunity to learn from and work alongside engineers from top AI and software companies (Nuro, Glean, Scale AI, MongoDB, etc.) and industry legends on the advisory board [factory.ai](https://factory.ai/company). - **High-Growth Environment**: The company is in a hyper-growth phase with significant funding, a rapidly growing customer base, and a clear market need. ## Sources 1. [factory.ai](https://factory.ai/) 2. [factory.ai/company](https://factory.ai/company) 3. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/factory-factoryai) 4. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/factory-2) 5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/factory-hq) ## Other roles at Factory - [Customer Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-marketing-factory-san-francisco-s8qt659xddm6) — San Francisco, CA - [GTM Strategy & Operations, EMEA Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/gtm-strategy-operations-emea-lead-factory-london-04qhmyzkeyzb) — London, United Kingdom - [GTM Strategy & Operations, AMER Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/gtm-strategy-operations-amer-lead-factory-san-francisco-074tw7xjmvfw) — San Francisco, CA - [Product Manager, Growth](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-growth-factory-san-francisco-zxmd0eyefywq) — San Francisco, CA - [Product Manager, Scale](https://feeny.ai/job/product-manager-scale-factory-san-francisco-vww1n63y35eg) — San Francisco, CA - [Manager, Solutions Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/manager-solutions-engineering-factory-san-francisco-hh0z9a288k90) — San Francisco, CA - [Head of Developer Relations](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-developer-relations-factory-united-states-e6nyg3wvmk1w) — United States - [Solutions Engineer, Enterprise, East](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-engineer-enterprise-east-factory-new-york-2804649506pp) — New York, NY - [Web Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/web-designer-factory-san-francisco-87s7bradqy5y) — San Francisco, CA - [VP of Revenue Marketing](https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-revenue-marketing-factory-san-francisco-02b2vtnxh0jb) — San Francisco, CA