Founding Deployment Strategist

Title of Role: Founding Deployment Strategist (AI Platform)
Location: San Francisco, CA (Hayes Valley)
Company Stage of Funding: Seed Stage (<$10M raised)
Office Type: Onsite (5 days/week)
Salary: $160,000 – $200,000 + Equity (0.25–0.75%)

Company Description

Our client is an early-stage, venture-backed AI startup building a new category in enterprise software—using AI agents to automate and transform post-sales workflows across the B2B customer lifecycle.

With strong early traction and backing from leading investors and operators, the company is redefining how enterprises handle onboarding, adoption, renewals, and expansion. Their platform enables organizations to scale high-touch customer engagement through AI-driven orchestration.

As a small, fast-growing team, they are looking for a founding operator to help define and scale how their product is deployed across enterprise customers.

What You Will Do

• Own the end-to-end deployment lifecycle for enterprise customers—from kickoff through production launch and expansion
• Build and refine the deployment playbook, creating scalable and repeatable processes for future customers
• Serve as the primary point of contact for customers post-sale, including leading workshops and executive-level engagements
• Configure and deploy AI-driven workflows tailored to customer needs
• Collaborate closely with engineering and product teams to translate customer feedback into product improvements
• Identify patterns across deployments and help shape the long-term product roadmap
• Drive customer success metrics including adoption, retention, and expansion
• Contribute to building and scaling the deployment function as the company grows

Ideal Candidate Background

• 3–8 years of experience in a customer-facing or strategic role (e.g., consulting, solutions engineering, forward deployed engineering, or implementation roles)
• Experience working with enterprise customers and managing complex deployments end-to-end
• Strong communication skills with the ability to engage both technical teams and executive stakeholders
• Proven ability to operate in ambiguous, fast-paced environments and build processes from scratch
• Demonstrated ownership of outcomes tied to business metrics (e.g., deployment success, expansion, retention)
• Familiarity with AI tools or strong interest in AI-driven products and workflows
• High agency, entrepreneurial mindset, and willingness to take on broad responsibility

Preferred

• Background in consulting (e.g., McKinsey, Bain, BCG) or similar strategic roles
• Experience at AI-native startups or companies with strong deployment/implementation functions
• Exposure to enterprise SaaS, customer success, or post-sales operations
• Experience building playbooks, frameworks, or operational systems from zero
• Prior founder or early-stage startup experience
• Familiarity with prompt engineering or AI-driven workflows

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive base salary: $160,000 – $200,000 (flexible up to ~$220K for exceptional candidates)
• Meaningful early-stage equity (0.25% – 0.75%)
• Founding-level role with direct access to leadership and high ownership
• Clear path to leadership or senior operational roles as the company scales
• Opportunity to define a new category in enterprise AI and shape customer experience at scale

This is a unique opportunity for a high-agency operator to build the deployment function from the ground up and play a critical role in scaling an early-stage AI company.