What are the responsibilities and job description for the Business Development Director, AI-native Business-Global Strategic Account position at Alibaba Cloud?
Key Responsibilities
Job Requirements
Required
- Build and own relationships with AI-native companies founders, CTOs, engineers, and product leaders across the U.S.
- Understand technical architectures and business models of AI-native companies—including LLM fine-tuning, RAG pipelines, AI agent orchestration, computer vision, and generative applications.
- Position Alibaba Cloud’s AI stack—including Tongyi Qianwen (Qwen) models, PAI (Platform for AI), GPU/ML-optimized instances, OSS for vector storage, and serverless inference—as the optimal infrastructure for cost, performance, and innovation.
- Drive adoption and expansion from initial proof-of-concept through scaled production usage, with a focus on AI-specific consumption (e.g., GPU hours, model hosting, API calls).
- Collaborate with Solutions Architects and AI specialists to design tailored, competitive solutions that solve real startup pain points: cost-efficient training, low-latency inference, global deployment, etc.
- Navigate complex technical evaluations and help startups compare Alibaba Cloud vs. competitors (AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, GCP Vertex AI) based on openness, pricing, and flexibility.
- Represent Alibaba Cloud at AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, AWS re:Invent Startup events, TechCrunch Disrupt), incubators (Y Combinator, a16z events), and VC partner meetings.
- Act as the voice of the customer—feeding insights back to product teams to improve developer experience, documentation, and AI tooling.
Job Requirements
Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
- 3 years in a customer-facing technical sales, solutions engineering, or developer relations role—preferably in cloud, AI/ML, or infrastructure.
- Deep understanding of modern AI stacks: familiarity with transformers, fine-tuning, quantization, vector databases, LangChain/LlamaIndex, inference optimization, and MLOps tools.
- Proven ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to both engineers and non-technical business audiences.
- Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills—you build trust quickly and thrive in ambiguous, founder-led environments.
- Willingness to travel extensively (~50% of time) across the U.S. to meet customers in person.
- Experience working with or at an AI-native companies (as employee, advisor, or investor).
- Hands-on experience deploying models on cloud platforms (Alibaba Cloud, AWS, GCP, Azure).
- Familiarity with open-weight models, model serving frameworks (vLLM, TGI), and cost/performance tradeoffs in inference.
- Genuine enthusiasm for AI innovation—you follow arXiv papers, experiment with open models (e.g., Llama, Mistral, Qwen), or build side projects with AI agents.
- Existing network in the U.S. AI/VC/startup ecosystem.