Strategic Business Development Lead at Samaya ai

Role

Samaya AI is building the first Expert Intelligence platform for Financial Services. Our users create teams of AI agents that supercharge financial research, discovery and analysis. We’re a high-growth, world-class AI team seeing incredible product traction with leading financial institutions.

Role Overview

The Strategic Business Development Lead will bring deep financial domain expertise ( investment research, asset management, trading, investment banking, risk, etc.) to advance Samaya’s adoption across key institutions. This role is central in helping customers unlock outcomes / use cases and integrate Samaya’s powerful AI Agents into their workflows.

You will:

Partner with Account Executives and sales leadership to support the full sales cycle — from discovery to closing — by bringing domain expertise, technical fluency, and consultative insight.
Engage senior stakeholders (portfolio managers, heads of research, quant leads, CIOs) in deep conversations about how Samaya can transform current workflows (e.g. due diligence, modeling, sourcing signals, thematic research, scenario analysis).
Lead tailored demos and workshops in financial workflows (e.g. valuation, deal modeling, stress testing, sector analysis, risk-scenario simulation), validating use cases and aligning to stakeholder pain points.
Serve as a trusted advisor: educate customers on AI’s potential (and limitations) in financial settings, and help them design adoption pathways.
Capture feedback and act as the “Voice of the Customer,” influencing product roadmap, prompt engineering strategies, domain expansions, and sales positioning.
Collaborate with marketing and enablement to produce thought leadership, case studies, and domain-specific collateral that resonates with finance audiences.
Stay abreast of trends in finance, fintech, AI, and the competitive landscape. Provide competitive intelligence and market insights to GTM and product teams.
Occasionally travel (customer visits, industry events) to strengthen relationships and market presence.

What You'll Need (Qualifications & Experience)

Required:

3+ years of experience in a financial expert role (e.g. investment banking, equity/credit research, asset management, trading desk, quant analytics, portfolio management).
Deep understanding of financial workflows: modeling, valuation, forecasting, risk management, company analysis, event-driven theme evaluation, etc.
Proven ability to engage and influence senior decision-makers (C-suite, heads of research, CIOs), especially in finance.
Excellent presentation and communication skills — able to translate AI capabilities into customer vernacular and deliver custom demos.
Ability to translate ambiguous business challenges into concrete technical/AI-enabled solutions.
A proactive, self-driven, and flexible mindset — you’ll be operating in a fast-moving startup environment.
Comfort working across teams (Product, ML, Engineering, Sales) and serving as the domain translator.

Preferred:

Advanced degree (MBA, CFA, CQF, MSc Finance, etc.).
Prior experience in risk, quant, or trading systems.
B2B sales, pre-sales, or solution engineering experience in fintech or deep-tech companies.

Compensation

The cash compensation range for this role is $159,000 - $242,000 OTE 70/30 split. Variable compensation components will be tied to sales outcomes / success.

Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Equity may also be considered as part of the overall compensation package.

Benefits

Comprehensive health insurance coverage (medical, dental, vision, and short-term disability) to support your health and wellbeing
Support your long-term financial well-being with 401K
Flexibility to rest and recharge with unlimited PTO
Travel budget to provide opportunities for learning and collaboration by attending conferences, visitings other offices, and more
Office equipment allowance to enhance the comfort of your workspace
Hybrid setup that offers flexibility in where you work, while staying aligned with our customers and supported locations

Inclusive Hiring

Interview Accommodations: We are committed to ensuring an equitable selection process for everyone and welcome applicants from varied backgrounds to enrich our team. If you require accommodations or adjustments during our recruitment process, please inform us.

Equal Opportunity Employer: We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.

Visa Sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. If we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

About Samaya

Samaya is building the first AI agents designed specifically for expert knowledge work in financial services - one of the world’s largest and most information-intensive industries.

In today’s financial world, professionals face overwhelming volumes of fast-moving, complex information. Traditional tools, and even general-purpose AI, lack the accuracy, depth, and reliability needed for critical decisions. We believe AI should go beyond helpful suggestions, it should act as a true expert collaborator.

Our mission is to supercharge financial research and decision-making by empowering professionals to build their own teams of expert AI agents. These agents combine exceptional speed and precision: answering deep questions instantly, automating complex workflows, and delivering structured, predictive insights. Samaya’s platform combines cutting-edge domain-specialized AI models, a world-class engineering and ML team, and a simple, intuitive interface designed for financial professionals.

We’re growing quickly, our user base has scaled from hundreds to 10,000+, with partnerships spanning top financial institutions around the world, including Morgan Stanley, a top 5 hedge fund, a top 5 asset management firm, and more.

We’re backed by $43.5M in Series A funding led by NEA, with investors including Eric Schmidt, Yann LeCun, Jeff Dean, Marty Chavez, and Mark Cuban.

If you’re excited about building expert AI that transforms how knowledge work is done, and want to be part of a fast-moving, supportive, and ambitious team - we’d love to hear from you.

Our Operating Principles

Put Users first. Our users rely on us to do their jobs. We exist because our users trust us to help them achieve their goals. In return for this trust users place in us, we keep their needs as our top priority.
Win as a collective. We are high achievers with a drive to succeed. We build strong bonds over this shared drive. We dive in to help when one of us needs it. We’re kind to each other and boost each other to succeed and grow professionally and personally. We build trust with each other by making commitments and consistently delivering on them. This trust means we genuinely support each other, embracing feedback as a tool for growth and improvement. We win by operating this way, as one team.
Focus and iterate quickly. Bias for action makes us build and learn quickly. Iterating fast requires clarity on what outcomes we are targeting and why. Prioritizing the important things, taking full ownership and initiative, making fast initial progress, and rapid iterations lead to the best outcomes.
Innovate Relentlessly. We pursue novel insights, challenging the status quo and reimagining how things are done. We aren’t attached to the past when improving our product and how we work in the future. We actively invest time in innovation, thinking “outside the box” to consistently raise our standards.
Prioritize Outcomes over Egos. We are committed not to a person, an idea, or an opinion but to continuously making progress to our goals. Sometimes, our goals are ambiguous; in those moments, we iterate, learn, and move on to the next inquiry. We ask the tough questions with kindness, dropping our egos in our pursuit of evidence. For our business goals, we learn from our users. For our scientific goals, our understanding is built through rigorous experimentation, research, and observation. For our personal goals, we embrace candid feedback and collaborative learning to guide our progress.