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About the Role

The Senior Director, Startup Business Development – EMEA will report to the Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA and lead the development of CoreWeave’s startup and venture capital business across the region. This is a business development overlay role where country sales teams retain account ownership. You will build relationships, propositions, programmes, market intelligence and operating mechanisms to help those teams identify, engage, and win startups onto CoreWeave. You will build and lead a team spanning priority geographies and regional programmes, with initial focus on the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Nordics, Benelux, and Israel.

Responsibilities

Define and execute CoreWeave’s EMEA startup business development strategy, operating plan and investment priorities.
Build a systematic view of the regional startup opportunity, identifying markets, investor portfolios, technology categories and companies likely to become significant consumers of AI infrastructure.
Establish clear criteria for prioritising startups based on technical ambition, compute intensity, funding trajectory, workload timing, leadership quality and strategic value.
Build senior relationships with venture capital firms, seed and growth investors, accelerators, universities, research laboratories and founder communities.
Develop strategic engagement plans for priority ecosystem organisations and create repeatable mechanisms for portfolio introductions, founder support, technical engagement and market intelligence.
Position CoreWeave as the preferred AI infrastructure and developer platform for companies with meaningful training, fine-tuning, inference and applied-intelligence requirements.
Engage founders, CTOs, researchers and investors before infrastructure architectures and platform relationships are firmly established.
Create qualified opportunities and introductions for country Startup and Digital Native field teams.
Partner with country sales leaders to define target companies, ecosystem priorities and engagement strategies while maintaining clear account ownership.
Coordinate strategically important opportunities across Sales, Field Engineering, Product, Engineering, Capacity, Finance, Legal, Marketing and Customer Success.
Establish clear programme eligibility, investment and graduation criteria, ensuring activity is focused on durable platform adoption and commercial potential.
Act as the regional voice of the startup ecosystem inside CoreWeave, translating market insight into recommendations for Product, Engineering, Capacity, Marketing and commercial leadership.
Build, lead and develop a high-performing EMEA Startup Business Development team with complementary programme and geographic coverage.
Establish a rigorous operating cadence and scorecard covering ecosystem coverage, target-company engagement, field acceptance, sourced and influenced pipeline, technical activation, consumption and downstream commercial impact.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in business development, sales, partnerships, startup go-to-market or venture ecosystem leadership within cloud infrastructure, enterprise technology, AI or another complex technology environment.
Significant leadership experience building and operating startup, venture capital or ecosystem programmes across multiple EMEA markets.
A proven record of converting ecosystem relationships into qualified opportunities, technical adoption, pipeline, consumption and commercial growth.
Demonstrated experience developing senior relationships with venture capital firms, accelerators, universities, research organisations, founders, CTOs and technology executives.
Experience working with country sales organisations to create demand and accelerate customer acquisition without displacing account ownership.
Strong understanding of the startup lifecycle, from formation and seed funding through venture growth and scaled commercial operation.
Experience identifying promising companies early and assessing their technical ambition, infrastructure needs, funding trajectory and long-term potential.
Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, AI platforms, developer tooling and the requirements of AI-native companies.
Demonstrated ability to build structured programmes, operating mechanisms and performance measures that scale beyond personal relationships.
Experience aligning Sales, Field Engineering, Product, Marketing, Finance, Legal and executive stakeholders around shared opportunities.
Strong analytical and operational capability, including market segmentation, portfolio analysis, opportunity attribution and executive business reviews.
Experience building, hiring, coaching and developing high-performing business development or ecosystem teams.
A record of operating successfully across EMEA markets and cultures, with the ability to travel regularly.
Leadership experience within the startup organisation of a major hyperscale cloud provider, AI platform company or global infrastructure technology business.
Direct experience building or scaling a regional startup business measured through customer acquisition, workload adoption, consumption and revenue.
Experience designing the operating model between a regional startup business development organisation and country-based sales teams.
Established senior relationships across the EMEA venture capital and AI startup ecosystem.
Experience working with compute-intensive AI companies across training, fine-tuning, inference, applied AI or AI platform development.
Experience creating startup programmes or technical adoption mechanisms that helped companies progress from experimentation to scaled production workloads.
Experience influencing product, capacity and go-to-market decisions using insight from founders, investors and startups.
A bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
Exceptional senior venture ecosystem builder with strong credibility with EMEA investors and founders, ability to identify high-potential technical companies early and translate ecosystem access into measurable commercial outcomes for a technology platform.
You have built a startup business or ecosystem and understand that credibility must ultimately produce customer and field outcomes.
You can move comfortably between a venture capital partner, a technical founder, a country sales leader and an internal product executive.
You combine a strong external network with the discipline to build repeatable systems.
You recognise promising companies early and make clear recommendations about where CoreWeave should invest time and resources.
You measure success through the quality of companies won, workloads activated and value created for field teams, not activity alone.
You operate with urgency, commercial judgement, curiosity and a strong bias toward execution.
This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency.

Skills

Business Development
Sales
Partnerships
Startup Go-to-Market
Venture Ecosystem Leadership
Cloud Infrastructure
Enterprise Technology
AI
Complex Technology
Startup Programmes
Venture Capital Programmes
Ecosystem Programmes
Market Intelligence
Operating Mechanisms
Relationship Building
Strategic Engagement
Technical Engagement
Market Insight Translation
Team Leadership
Performance Measurement
Analytical Capability
Operational Capability
Market Segmentation
Portfolio Analysis
Opportunity Attribution
Executive Business Reviews
Hiring
Coaching
Team Development
Cross-cultural Operations
Travel
Customer Acquisition
Workload Adoption
Consumption
Revenue Growth
Startup Lifecycle Understanding
Company Identification
Technical Ambition Assessment
Infrastructure Needs Assessment
Funding Trajectory Assessment
Long-term Potential Assessment
AI Platforms
Developer Tooling
Structured Programme Development
Scalable Operating Mechanisms
Stakeholder Alignment
Cross-functional Coordination
External Network
Repeatable Systems Building
Commercial Judgement
Urgency
Curiosity
Bias Toward Execution

Location

EMEA

Work Type

Full-time

Experience Level

Senior Director
15+ years of experience

Education Level

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Salary/Compensations

Competitive base salary
Performance-based annual bonus
Equity awards

Benefits

Family-level Medical Insurance
Family-level Dental Insurance
Generous Pension Contribution
Life Assurance at 4x Salary
Critical Illness Cover
Employee Assistance Programme
Tuition Reimbursement
Work culture focused on innovative disruption

About the Company

The Essential Cloud for AI™. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI labs, startups, and global enterprises, CoreWeave combines superior infrastructure performance with deep technical expertise to accelerate breakthroughs and turn compute into capability. Founded in 2017, CoreWeave became a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: CRWV) in March 2025. Learn more at www.coreweave.com.
We're proud to be a Living Wage accredited Employer.
At CoreWeave, we work hard, have fun and move fast. We’re in an exciting stage of hyper-growth, we’re not afraid of a little chaos and we’re constantly learning.
Our team cares deeply about how we build our product and how we work together, which is represented through our core values: Be Curious at Your Core, Act Like an Owner, Empower Employees, Deliver Best-in-Class Client Experiences, Achieve More Together.
We support an entrepreneurial outlook and independent thinking, and foster an environment that encourages collaboration and innovative solutions to complex problems. You will be surrounded by some of the best talent in the industry, with the opportunity to help shape CoreWeave’s future.

Equal Opportunity

CoreWeave is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace. All qualified applicants and candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information.