Business Development Lead

THE ROLE

About The Role

You'll build Ora's go-to-market from the ground up. Right now the founders are running every conversation; your job is to take that over, scale it, and turn early PoCs into a real pipeline.

This is not a role for someone who needs an existing playbook. You'll define how we sell, what we sell, and to whom — alongside the founders. In year two, you hire the team underneath you.

The buyers are technical: ML platform leads, inference infrastructure teams, automotive AI groups, chip vendors. You need to hold your own in those conversations without a sales engineer next to you.

What You'll Do

Your impact

• Build and close pipeline across our three motions: compression-as-a-service, model licensing, and chip vendor partnerships.
• Own relationships with existing accounts (automotive OEM, edge inference, cloud) and expand them.
• Open new accounts in target segments: OEMs, cloud providers, AI labs, edge accelerator companies.
• Define pricing, packaging, and commercial terms with the founders.
• Represent Ora at the conferences and venues where deep tech buyers actually show up.

What You Bring

What we're looking for

• Technical background — MSc or PhD in CS, ML, EE, physics, or similar.
• A track record of scaling GTM at an early-stage deep tech startup. You've done this before, not just observed it.
• You sell deep tech. You can explain how our model compression works to a CTO, and why it matters to a CFO.
• Network in at least one of: enterprise AI, ML infrastructure, automotive, semiconductors, European cloud.
• You close deals.

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience selling into automotive or regulated industries (the EU AI Act conversation is real for our customers).
• Existing relationships with inference chip vendors, cloud providers or OEMs.
• German or French in addition to English.

PRACTICAL

• Vienna-based. Hybrid or fully remote works. Expect meaningful travel.
• Working language is English.
• We sponsor visas and handle relocation.
• Compensation: €110–150k base, plus equity. Austrian minimum disclosed per Kollektivvertrag: €56,854/year.