Director of AI Ecosystem & Partnerships

Justworks•3h ago

United StatesOnsiteFull-timeDirector Level8+ yrs exp

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Who We Are
At Justworks, you’ll enjoy a welcoming and casual environment, great benefits, wellness program offerings, company retreats
the ability to interact with and learn from leaders in the startup community. We work hard and care about our most prized asset - our people.
We’re helping businesses get off the ground by enabling them to focus on running their business. We solve HR issues. We’re data-driven and never stop iterating. If you’d like to work in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment, are interested in building something meaningful and having fun while doing it, we’d love to hear from you.
We're united by shared goals and shared motivations at Justworks. These are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team.
Our Values
If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in.
Who You Are
Justworks is building for the future of work — and increasingly, that work is happening inside AI platforms, agentic workflows, and new software ecosystems.
We’re looking for a Director, AI Ecosystem & Partnerships to define and lead how Justworks shows up across the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Today, we have several promising but fragmented efforts underway, including early AI integrations, API expansion, emerging platform relationships
new thinking around AI-driven discovery. This role will bring those threads together into a cohesive commercial strategy that drives visibility, preference
adoption for Justworks within AI platforms and among the companies building on them.
This is a high-visibility, high-judgment role for someone who can operate across strategy and execution. You will work closely with Product, Partnerships, Marketing, Sales
senior leadership to translate a fast-moving AI ecosystem into clear choices, prioritized investments
measurable business outcomes.
The mandate is simple: help ensure Justworks is not only integrated into the next generation of workflows, but discovered, recommended, trusted, and adopted by the businesses using them.
Your Success Profile
What You Will Work On
Define and lead Justworks’ commercial AI ecosystem strategy
Develop a unified strategy for how Justworks wins within AI platforms, agentic workflows, and emerging software ecosystems.
Translate fragmented efforts across integrations, APIs, partnerships, AI discovery, and go-to-market into a clear roadmap with measurable outcomes.
Identify where Justworks should invest, partner, build, or experiment to increase visibility and adoption in AI-driven customer journeys.
Build executive-ready recommendations that connect AI ecosystem opportunities to commercial impact, customer value, and long-term strategic positioning.
Build and scale strategic AI partnerships
Own and develop relationships with frontier AI labs, AI platforms, developer ecosystems, and other strategic partners.
Identify opportunities for commercial partnerships, co-marketing, marketplace placement, featured integrations, and ecosystem distribution.
Ensure Justworks is not only technically integrated, but visible, trusted, and prioritized within relevant partner ecosystems.
Represent Justworks externally with the credibility and judgment required to engage senior partner stakeholders.
Drive AI-native go-to-market and discovery
Partner with Marketing to evolve traditional search and content strategies into AI discovery and Answer Engine Optimization approaches.
Help define how Justworks should appear in AI-generated experiences, recommendations, and customer research workflows.
Develop messaging, campaigns, and channel strategies tailored to AI-first startups, technology companies, and businesses adopting AI-native workflows.
Turn AI platform visibility, customer behavior, and ecosystem data into practical recommendations for Sales, Marketing, and Product.
Partner closely with Product and Engineering
Collaborate with Product and Engineering on integrations, API capabilities, and platform requirements that support AI ecosystem adoption.
Translate partner needs, customer workflows, and market signals into clear product insights and prioritization inputs.
Help evaluate which technical investments are most likely to create commercial leverage.
Bridge business strategy and technical execution without needing to be the technical owner.
Create commercial impact and operating leverage
Define success metrics across platform visibility, partner-sourced pipeline, AI-driven acquisition, ecosystem placement, and revenue contribution.
Build business cases that help leadership evaluate trade-offs, resource needs, and investment priorities.
Turn early experiments into repeatable growth motions.
Develop reusable frameworks, narratives, and operating models that help internal teams understand and act on AI ecosystem opportunities.
Qualifications
You have 8–12+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, platform ecosystems, corporate strategy, product strategy, GTM strategy, or a related role.
You have experience working with or within platform ecosystems , such as SaaS platforms, marketplaces, API ecosystems, developer platforms, or emerging AI platforms.
You understand the AI landscape to separate durable strategic shifts from hype, including LLMs, AI agents, copilots, AI search, and emerging enterprise workflows.
You are a structured thinker who can take an ambiguous opportunity and turn it into a clear strategy, roadmap, business case, or executive narrative.
You are commercially oriented and can connect ecosystem activity to pipeline, revenue, adoption, retention, or strategic positioning.
You can operate cross-functionally across Product, Marketing, Sales, Partnerships, and senior leadership without needing perfect ownership lines.
You are comfortable working directly with data, market signals, partner inputs, and customer insights to make practical recommendations.
You are a strong communicator who can present with clarity and conviction to executives, partners, and internal teams.
You have a builder mindset: you are energized by creating structure where none exists and turning early signals into scalable operating models.
You are genuinely curious about how AI will change software discovery, business workflows, and the way companies choose and adopt tools.
What Success Looks Like
In this role, success means Justworks has a clear, focused, and commercially grounded AI ecosystem strategy. Within your first year, you will have helped the company:
Align fragmented AI-related efforts into a prioritized roadmap.
Establish meaningful relationships with the AI platforms and ecosystems most relevant to Justworks.
Increase visibility and discoverability in AI-driven customer journeys.
Identify and launch partnership or platform motions that create measurable pipeline, adoption, or revenue impact.
Give Product, Marketing, Sales, and Partnerships a shared language for where AI ecosystem opportunities matter — and where they do not.
Build the foundation for Justworks to become a trusted HR, payroll, and workforce solution within the next generation of software workflows.
Why This Role Matters
One of Justworks’ core product priorities is to help customers get work done where they are already working. Increasingly, that includes AI platforms, AI assistants, and agentic workflows.
Integration alone will not be enough. To win in this next phase, Justworks needs to become:
A trusted partner within relevant AI ecosystems.
A visible and recommended solution in AI-generated experiences.
A natural choice for AI-native and technology-forward businesses managing their teams.
A company that can translate AI ecosystem change into practical commercial advantage.
This role is critical to making that vision real.
This position is paid a base wage plus incentive compensation. The base wage range for this position is targeted at $212,000 - $274,000 in our New York City office
competitive On-Target Earnings, inclusive of incentive compensation, of $53,000 - $68,500. Final offers may vary from those listed. *Incentive compensation is not guaranteed
earning is subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable incentive compensation plan.
#LI-Hybrid #LI-KO1
Actual compensation is based on multiple factors that are unique to each candidate, including and not limited to skill set, level of relevant experience
specific work location. Salary ranges for positions based in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location.
For more information about Justworks’ Total Reward Philosophy, including all of the perks and benefits we are proud to offer our team members, please visit Total Rewards @ Justworks .
Diversity At Justworks
Justworks is committed to maintaining a workplace where diversity of identity, culture
life experience is the norm and is celebrated authentically and respected consistently. Diversity in our work, our people
our product drives creativity and innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and integrity, competitiveness
collaboration throughout our business and in the market. We depend on our differences to make our team stronger, our workplace more dynamic
our product accessible to all of our customers.
We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or familial status, disability, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetic information
any other legally protected status. Justworks is fully dedicated to providing necessary support to candidates with disabilities who may require reasonable accommodations. We also provide reasonable accommodations to employees based on their sincerely held religious beliefs, as well as for other covered reasons consistent with applicable federal, state
local laws. If you're in need of a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at accommodations@justworks.com . Your comfort and success matter to us
we're here to ensure an inclusive experience.
Our DEIB Report

Required skills

AIpartnershipsbusiness developmentproduct strategyGTM strategy