Business Development Director

ABOUT THE COMPANY

OpenRouter is the open AI routing and infrastructure layer that enterprises use to access, manage, and optimize the best large language models across providers—without lock-in, capacity constraints, or unnecessary cost. We power some of the most advanced AI teams in the world by giving them the flexibility to move fast, scale confidently, and stay future-proof as models evolve.

As enterprise adoption of AI accelerates, OpenRouter sits at the center of how organizations operationalize LLMs across research, product, and production workloads.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As Business Development Director, you'll lead the development and execution of OpenRouter's comprehensive partner strategy to accelerate AI adoption and revenue growth. You'll build and scale a vibrant partner ecosystem that includes product, distribution and ISV partnerships aimed at growing our user base and revenue.

You'll be the first partnerships hire, responsible for creating our partnerships strategy, managing relationships with our most strategic partners, and setting partner-influenced revenue targets. You'll work cross-functionally with product, engineering, sales, and marketing to position OpenRouter as the platform of choice for AI-native applications.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Build strategic platform and product partnerships with complementary AI/ML companies to drive technical integrations, expand distribution, and accelerate mutual customer adoption.

• Track partner contributions to customer acquisition, product usage, and expansion across the full partnership lifecycle to drive partnership revenue and growth targets.

• Analyze the AI/ML ecosystem to identify priority partners, competitive dynamics, and emerging opportunities while maintaining expertise in AI infrastructure and partnership trends.

• Navigate multi-sided platform dynamics by coordinating across internal teams, technology partners, and customers to structure agreements that create mutual value.

• Negotiate complex partnership agreements, including technical integrations, data privacy terms, GTM commitments, and commercial structure, while building scalable onboarding frameworks.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Legal to prioritize partner integrations, develop co-marketing initiatives, and balance partner needs with product strategy.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• 8+ years in partnerships, business development, or strategic alliances, with at least 3-5 years in a leadership role building partnership programs from scratch.

• Experience managing strategic partnerships with leading technology providers (e.g., AI model providers, API platforms, SaaS companies), including developing technical integrations, API distribution strategies, and product-led growth (PLG) or sales-led growth (SLG) initiatives.

• Proven track record scaling consumption-based or usage-based partnership models (API platforms, developer tools, infrastructure) with measurable impact on product adoption and revenue ($10M+ in influenced consumption/revenue).

• Strong commercial and legal acumen with experience negotiating complex agreements involving data governance, SLAs, consumption economics, and technical integration commitments.

• Technical background or deep fluency with API platforms, developer tooling, and cloud infrastructure—able to engage credibly with engineering teams on integration architecture, authentication patterns, and data flows.

• Strategic thinker who can balance long-term ecosystem building with short-term execution, comfortable with ambiguity and building from zero to one.