About Gray Swan
Gray Swan is on a mission to empower the world to use AI safely and securely. We evaluate AI models for the leading frontier labs along with building real-time threat detection and adaptive adversarial red teaming agents for teams deploying AI.
We're a team of approximately 50 people, well-funded, growing quickly. Our work directly influences how the world deploys AI agents and systems at scale..
Learn more about how we work
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The Role
The Strategic Partnership Manager will report directly to our SVP of Frontier Lab Safety, who owns the overall relationships and technical scope across our AI lab customer base.
As we grow our lab engagements rapidly, we need a dedicated operator to make sure everything around those relationships runs cleanly. You function as the connective tissue across customers, internal teams, and leadership so nothing falls through the cracks.
This person is an incredible project manager, strategic partner and tactical driver functioning between sales operations, customer success, and engineering with a strong emphasis on execution and follow through.
What You’ll Do:
Support the SVP of Frontier Lab Safety
Act as the operational backbone for all lab relationships, owning the workflows and coordination to ensure services can scale.
Translate technical scopes into clear milestones and deliverables for broader team execution.
Coordinate initial calls with new customers, including scheduling, prep materials, and post-call follow-up.
Monitor dedicated Slack channels for lab customers and surface new signals or requests to internal teams quickly.
Ensure that internal teams can focus on high-leverage work by owning the execution details of every engagement.
Deal Execution and Pipeline Management
Own the CRM for all lab relationships capturing every contact, conversation, and opportunity to reflect reality.
Drive deals to close in real time, working with procurement and legal teams to keep contracts moving.
Identify and resolve blockers before they impact timelines, maintaining full visibility into contract status.
Maintain clear visibility into pipeline status and flag any delays before they become problems.
Milestone and Delivery Coordination
Keep the accounting team informed of milestone status and flag when deliverables are ready for invoicing.
Align internal teams and customer expectations on timelines, tracking progress and flagging risks early.
Provide light project management across active engagements to keep expectations aligned.
Be a consistent, reliable point of contact for lab partners on operational and logistical questions.
Who You Are:
3+ years in partnerships, account management, customer success, or sales operations, ideally in a technical environment.
Demonstrated ability to manage multiple active relationships and projects simultaneously
Experience working with enterprise procurement and legal teams to move contracts forward.
Exceptional attention to detail & CRM hygiene, in contract review, and in follow-up.
Strong written communication. You will be representing Gray Swan in writing constantly.
Comfortable in Slack-heavy, async-first work cultures. This is how our customers and internal teams communicate.
Bonus Points If You Have:
Prior experience directly supporting a senior technical leader or executive in a customer facing capacity.
Prior experience at a startup or high-growth company where a process is being built in real time alongside the work.
Exposure to professional services or milestone-based engagements, as opposed to pure SaaS models.
Working familiarity with AI/ML concepts at a high level, sufficient to follow technical discussions and ask the right questions.
If you don’t have 100% of these, you should still seriously consider applying. We care more about what you can do than your credentials.
You’ll Thrive Here If You:
Proactive: you identify problems early and come with solutions, not just status updates.
Low ego, high ownership & willing to go seamlessly from strategy to execution.
A relationship builder. Labs are high-trust customers. You earn that trust through consistency and discretion.
Energized by ambiguity. The role will evolve as our business grows, and that is a feature, not a bug.
Discreet. You will be privy to sensitive commercial and research information.
A strong cross-functional communicator who can work across technical, legal, finance, and customer teams.
What We Offer:
We offer a competitive compensation package designed to reward impact and incentivize growth. Our compensation philosophy is informed by our current valuation and recent industry data.
Compensation: $86,000-$153,000 (On target earnings: $130,000-230,000)
plus a meaningful equity package
Benefits:
401k with up to 4% matching
28 days annual leave (vacation + holidays)
Health, dental, and vision coverage
Catered lunches (Pittsburgh office)
Flexible work arrangements
Visa sponsorship available for exceptional candidates
Interview Process
🔎 Application review. We read everything; we’ll respond within 10 days.
✏️ Online technical screen (15 min). Complete a simple, job-relevant exercise.
🗣 Intro call (30 min). We learn about you; you learn about us.
🧑💻 Technical interview (90 min). Live coding with some tasks requiring AIand others not.
🗣 Experience & culture interview (60 min). Conversational exploration of the skills fit.
😇 Reference checks. We’ll reach out to 3-5 references that you provide.
📃 Offer. If it’s mutual, we move fast.
How to Apply
Submit your resume, link to your portfolio, and answer the questions on the application.