Sr Business Development & Ops Lead, Robotics & Physical AI

Job Description

We are looking for a Sr Business Development and Operations Lead to help shape how World Labs brings its robotics technology to market. This is a highly technical, hands-on business development role at the intersection of Physical AI, simulation, spatial intelligence and enterprise customers.

Responsibilities

• Develop a deep understanding of our robotics technology, its capabilities and limitations, and how the broader robotics and Physical AI ecosystem is evolving.
• Identify the customers, use cases, and problems where our technology can create differentiated value, and develop a strong point of view on where the market is heading.
• Spend meaningful time with customers to understand their workflows, technical constraints, deployment environments, and unmet needs firsthand.
• Build a tight feedback loop between customers and the team: translate problems back to research and engineering, synthesize patterns, and help distinguish scalable product opportunities from one-off customization.
• Shape and execute early customer engagements, pilots, and partnerships in close collaboration with research, engineering, and product teams.
• Own strategic opportunities end to end: from prospecting and discovery through technical evaluation, commercial structure, negotiation, contracting, and close.
• Build the operational foundation for an early commercial function: maintain customer and opportunity pipelines, establish lightweight processes, drive follow-through, unblock dependencies, and make sure commitments get delivered.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in related industries.
• Deep experience in robotics, Physical AI, autonomous systems, simulation, or an adjacent frontier technology, with firsthand exposure to customers, products, or deployments.
• Technical fluency to engage credibly with researchers and engineers, with strong curiosity to understand how the technology works and draw connections between technical capabilities and market opportunities.
• Strong understanding of the different generations of robotics technology - from traditional automation, through the computer-vision-driven wave of robotics, to today’s frontier in imitation learning, reinforcement learning, robot foundation models, and sim-to-real.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and close complex B2B relationships, from ambiguous early conversations through signed agreements.
• Strong market and adoption judgment: you understand where new robotics capabilities will find pull first, which customers and use cases to prioritize, and how to sequence entry across markets.
• Ability to turn technical capability into repeatable commercial value: identify the right wedge, business model, pricing, and channel strategy, and build a path from demo → paid PoC → production deployment while avoiding bespoke work that does not scale.
• Comfortable quantifying and defending commercial decisions: you can build a credible pipeline forecast, price a pilot, or model a deal structure with real numbers behind it.
• Builder mentality. You thrive in the ambiguity of early commercialization, creating the processes, tools, and operating cadence needed while figuring out what works.
• Experience being an early or founding commercial hire inside a highly technical organization: you know how to earn credibility with researchers and engineers, not just with enterprise buyers.
• Low ego and highly collaborative. You seek the best ideas regardless of where they come from, build closely with the team, and do what is needed to deliver results.

What We Offer

• Pay Range $250-$350k base salary (good-faith estimate for San Francisco Bay Area upon hire; actual offer based on experience, skills, and qualifications)
• Total Compensation: Base salary plus equity awards