Technical Business Development Manager, Startup & VC Ecosystem

San Francisco · USD 118,900-163,450 / year · Posted Oct 13, 2026

At a glance

Databricks is the Data and AI company. More than 20,000 organizations worldwide — including adidas, AT&T, Bayer, Block, Mastercard, Rivian, Unilever, and 70% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Data + AI Platform to build and scale data and AI apps, analytics and agents. Headquartered in San Francisco with 30+ offices around the globe, Databricks offers a unified platform that includes Genie, Lakebase, Agent Bricks, Lakeflow, Lakehouse, and Unity Catalog. To learn more, follow Databricks on LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Instagram.

The Technical Business Development Manager for the Startup and VC Ecosystem owns the operational engine and relationships behind Databricks' work with earliest-stage founders.
The role is highly technical, requiring the candidate to run the startup program day to day, sit across from early-stage founders to discuss AI systems, and produce founder and investor events in San Francisco.
This position blends operational discipline, technical prototyping, and ecosystem relationship-building to help shape how Databricks engages the startup community.

Run the startup program day-to-day, including applicant intake, evaluation, scoring, routing, and offer decisions using AI automation built with Databricks AI tooling.
Bring programmatic discipline by managing trackers, automation, the quality bar, and follow-through.
Hold real technical conversations with early-stage founders about their models, agents, data, automation, and where Databricks and Neon fit.
Build automation and internal tooling that runs the program, staying hands-on with the same AI tools founders use.
Assess each founder's technical capability and the strength of their idea, carrying insights back to Product and Databricks Ventures.
Design and run a regular calendar of founder and investor gatherings in San Francisco, including dinners, workshops, office hours, and demo-day tie-ins.
Partner with events and platform teams at leading venture firms to co-produce gatherings and build durable relationships.
Represent Databricks as a founder-first, technically credible presence across the venture community.
Work alongside Databricks Ventures on engaging founders across the full arc of their journey and grow into broader ownership of the startup function.

Genuinely technical with AI, with the ability to build, prototype automation, reason about agent architectures, and review a founder's stack.
A programmatic operator with an obsessive eye for detail capable of running complex, multi-track programs.
Possess developer-relations instinct to earn credibility with builders and clearly explain and teach hard technical ideas.
Comfortable around early-stage founders and investors, ready to build relationships with top venture firms.
Experience helping design and run events that people actually want to attend.
Comfort switching between hands-on technical work, operational execution, and strategic thinking in the same day.
Based in San Francisco with the ability to provide regular in-person time with founders and investors in the Bay Area.
Empathy for founders and a long view of their careers.

Background as a founder, an early engineer, or a forward-deployed or solutions engineer
Experience in B2B SaaS, AI and data infrastructure, or developer ecosystems