Sr. Partnerships Manager, Model Ecosystem
Together AI
Sales & Business Development
San Francisco, CA, USA
USD 160k-230k / year + Equity
Posted on Apr 8, 2026
About the Role
As the Partnerships Manager for our Model Ecosystem, you will be the primary architect of Together AI’s model library. This is a high-impact, cross-functional role focused on bringing the world’s leading proprietary and open-source models onto the Together platform. You will navigate an ever-evolving landscape to negotiate non-standard, creative deals that provide developers with the best possible building blocks for AI applications.
You are a "deal-maker" who thrives in ambiguity. You will sit at the intersection of Product, Finance, and Marketing, ensuring that our model roadmap is not only technically superior but commercially viable and market-facing.
Responsibilities
- Negotiate & Manage Partnerships: Lead end-to-end deal cycles with model builders across all modalities (text, image, video, etc.). You will handle everything from initial outreach to negotiating complex, creative commercial terms for both proprietary and open-source models.
- Curate the Model Library: Act as the internal champion for our "Model Library," identifying which frontier and specialized models we should bring to Together AI to maintain our competitive edge.
- Product & Engineering Alignment: Work closely with the Product team to define "bring-up" requirements and ensure new models are integrated seamlessly into our inference and fine-tuning stacks.
- Commercial Strategy: Partner with Finance to construct deal structures that balance aggressive growth with sustainable unit economics, often involving non-standard incentive structures.
- Go-to-Market & Co-Selling: Collaborate with Partner Marketing to announce new integrations and create momentum. You will also engage in co-selling efforts, helping our Sales team understand how to leverage specific partner models to win enterprise deals.
Requirements
- Creative Deal Maker: You have a track record of constructing partnership agreements that don’t follow a standard template. You can navigate complex IP, revenue-share, and exclusivity discussions with ease.
- High EQ & Collaborative: You are partner-oriented. You know how to build trust quickly and find the "win-win" in a competitive environment.
- Technical Curiosity: While you don’t need to be an ML researcher, you should have the technical depth to discuss model architecture, context windows, and inference requirements with product teams.
- Relevant Experience: 5-7+ years in Business Development or Strategic Partnerships. We value experience from high-growth API, cloud infrastructure, or developer platform companies (think Stripe, MongoDB, or Twilio) where you managed complex ecosystems.
- AI-Native Mindset: You work at pace with a relentless sense of urgency. You prefer "done and iterating" over "perfect and stagnant."
Preferred Qualifications
- Direct experience working with LLM labs or open-source AI communities.
- Experience in "co-selling" motions where partnerships directly drove revenue.
About Together AI
Together AI is a research-driven artificial intelligence company. We believe open and transparent AI systems will drive innovation and create the best outcomes for society, and together we are on a mission to significantly lower the cost of modern AI systems by co-designing software, hardware, algorithms, and models. We have contributed to leading open-source research, models, and datasets to advance the frontier of AI, and our team has been behind technological advancement such as FlashAttention, Hyena, FlexGen, and RedPajama. We invite you to join a passionate group of researchers in our journey in building the next generation AI infrastructure.
Compensation
We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance and other competitive benefits. The US base salary range for this full-time position is: $160k - 230k+ equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by location, level and role. Individual compensation will be determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge.
Equal Opportunity
Together AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and more.
Please see our privacy policy at https://www.together.ai/privacy.