Strategic Business Development, Public Sector

About Liquid AI

Spun out of MIT CSAIL, we build general-purpose AI systems that run efficiently across deployment targets, from data center accelerators to on-device hardware, ensuring low latency, minimal memory usage, privacy, and reliability. We partner with enterprises across consumer electronics, automotive, life sciences, and financial services. We are scaling rapidly and need exceptional people to help us get there.

The Opportunity

You’ll build Liquid AI’s public sector business, with an initial focus on U.S. defense, turning early customer wins into sustained adoption of Liquid Foundation Models. Our models can bring AI to environments where connectivity, compute, power, and data access are constrained, creating opportunities to solve real mission problems.

Working directly with our founders, business leadership, and engineers, you’ll decide where to focus, develop customer and partner relationships, and own opportunities from first conversation through contract award, deployment, and expansion.

This is a hands-on commercial leadership role with revenue responsibility and the scope to shape both our public sector strategy and the products that support it.ducts and market priorities while staying close to customers and the details of execution.

You must be based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, or relocate there by your start date, and be available for regular in-person customer and partner engagement and domestic travel.

What We're Looking For

We need someone who:

• Turns interest into commitment: You ask who needs the capability, who can fund it, and how it will be purchased. You establish concrete next steps and reset or stop pursuits when there is no credible path forward.

• Makes decisions with incomplete information: You choose where to invest time and technical resources, test your assumptions with customers, and adjust as evidence changes.

• Works through the details: You stay close to technical requirements, commercial terms, and delivery dependencies. You bring the right people into the conversation, challenge assumptions, and make commitments grounded in what the team can deliver.

The Work

• Own revenue and account strategy. Source, qualify, negotiate, and close public sector and defense opportunities, then develop renewals and expansion. Prioritize agencies, programs, and partners, with account plans and forecasts grounded in customer commitments, funding, and contracting milestones.

• Build relationships and a path to purchase. Engage mission users, technical leaders, program managers, budget owners, and contracting teams. Shape pursuits around acquisition timelines and available contract routes, deciding when to sell directly or work through a prime, integrator, or reseller.

• Turn technical evaluations into funded deployments. Work with solutions and engineering teams to establish the customer’s requirements for accuracy, latency, memory, power, connectivity, and deployment environment, then define use cases, target hardware, performance criteria, resources, and timelines. Establish the funding and transition path early, and coordinate security, data handling, authorization, and integration requirements.

• Lead commercial negotiations. Structure model licensing, embedded distribution, partner agreements, and scoped development work with Legal and Finance. Align pricing, usage rights, data and intellectual property, support, and delivery commitments.

• Build partnerships that extend our reach. Develop relationships with defense primes, integrators, and defense technology companies that can bring Liquid into broader platforms and programs. Coordinate joint pursuits and proposal inputs.

• Establish how the business scales. Build account coverage, qualification standards, and a regular pipeline review process. Turn early wins into repeatable approaches, bring customer requirements into product planning, and help leadership identify future capabilities and hiring needs.

Experience & Capabilities

What you'll need:

• A strong record of personally sourcing and closing U.S. defense business in software, AI/ML, infrastructure, or another technically complex market, with clear revenue ownership and performance against targets.

• Established relationships within defense agencies, military services, program offices, or major defense contractors, and evidence of turning those relationships into qualified opportunities.

• Practical knowledge of defense budgeting and acquisition, including direct awards, competitive pursuits, contract vehicles, and selling through primes. Experience moving a prototype or pilot into sustained, funded use.

• Technical fluency to discuss model evaluation, deployment options, and hardware constraints with AI and engineering leaders, and translate those discussions into a clear commercial scope.

• Experience negotiating complex agreements and coordinating Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, and delivery teams through award and implementation.

• Experience building a new market, territory, or sales motion at an early-stage or growth-stage company.

Helpful, not required:

• Experience selling foundation models, AI infrastructure, embedded software, or edge computing products, including on-premises and disconnected deployments.

• Experience embedding a product into a defense partner’s broader platform or program, including commercial licensing and subcontracting.

• An active U.S. security clearance, particularly Top Secret or TS/SCI, and experience working with customers in classified environments.

What Success Looks Like (Year One)

• Closed public sector and defense business, with a qualified pipeline supported by identified buyers, funding sources, acquisition paths, and realistic timelines.

• At least one customer evaluation converted into a funded deployment, with agreed performance requirements and a clear basis for continued use and expansion.

• A repeatable approach to priority accounts and partners, informed by early wins, with consistent qualification, forecasting, and customer feedback into product decisions.

What We Offer

• Build a business with the founders: Shape Liquid’s public sector direction, influence our products, and own the customer relationships and commercial results that establish the practice.

• Compensation & Equity: Competitive base salary, variable compensation, and equity, so you share in what we build. Final offers reflect skills, experience, and location.

• Time Off: Unlimited PTO, plus company-wide Refill Days, long weekends when the whole company rests together.

• Health & Wellbeing: Comprehensive health coverage, with details varying by location.

• Paid Leave: Paid leave for pregnancy, parenting, medical needs, and caring for family.