The Role:The
AI Strategic Partnerships Lead sits within Citi's Head of AI Organization and serves as a dynamic business leader and execution-driven orchestrator for external AI technology partnerships. This SVP-level leader is accountable for
executing on Citi's enterprise AI strategy by actively scouting, rigorously evaluating, and driving external AI technologies across the full partnership lifecycle - from initial ecosystem discovery and PoC validation to compliant, enterprise-scale production rollout.
This role combines strong commercial and investment acumen with either
AI product management discipline or
Generative AI engineering fluency. The ideal candidate operates as a proactive business leader who understands the venture capital and startup landscape, navigates complex enterprise environments, and collaborates hand-in-hand with dedicated Project Managers to move partner technologies through rigorous technical, operational, and governance milestones into business unit adoption.
Unlike pure corporate development or research roles, this position is focused on operationalizing high-value AI solutions across Citi's global business lines. The leader bridges external innovation (startups, frontier labs, VCs, accelerators) with internal delivery teams, ensuring that every partnership addresses validated Business Unit needs, meets strict regulatory and risk standards, and delivers measurable enterprise ROI.
ResponsibilitiesStrategic Partnerships Engagement & Lifecycle Management- Ecosystem Scouting & Assessment: Proactively scout and evaluate emerging AI startups, foundation model providers, agentic platform vendors, RAG/data infrastructure providers, and specialized tooling to identify high-potential solutions that address Citi's business challenges.
- Full Partnership Lifecycle Ownership: Manage the end-to-end partnership lifecycle - encompassing initial market mapping, technology and commercial assessment, investment/licensing awareness, contractual alignment, sandbox onboarding, and long-term vendor relationship management.
- Venture & Startup Ecosystem Engagement: Leverage strong knowledge of the venture capital, accelerator, and startup investment landscape to gauge company maturity, financial viability, product velocity, and enterprise readiness.
Strategy Execution & PoC-to-Production Delivery- Execution on AI Strategy: Translate Citi's overarching AI strategic priorities into structured, time-bound execution plans, ensuring vendor initiatives directly advance target business outcomes.
- PoC Leadership & Sandbox Testing: Design, oversee, and run structured sandbox evaluations, proof-of-concepts (PoCs), and objective competitive bake-offs with clearly defined performance, latency, cost, and security benchmarks.
- Rollout to Production: Collaborate closely with Project Managers, enterprise architects, and engineering teams to shepherd validated partner technologies from successful PoC completion through full deployment and operationalization in production environments.
- Technical & Product Fluency: Apply deep AI product management principles or Gen AI engineering fluency (understanding LLM architectures, context management, prompt/agent orchestration, vector stores, and synthetic data) to direct technical teams, validate architecture assumptions, and stress-test vendor capabilities.
Business Leadership & Enterprise Stakeholder Integration- Business Unit Relationship Leadership: Act as the primary engagement partner for Business Unit leadership, understanding their operational workflows, pain points, and commercial targets to align the right partner solutions to real business demand.
- Cross-Functional Governance & TPRM Navigation: Serve as the chief facilitator across Risk, Compliance, Information Security, Model Risk Management (MRM), Legal, and Procurement to guide startup partners through Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) and onboarding requirements.
- Executive Communication & Business Cases: Develop clear, non-technical business cases, executive briefings, and ROI models for senior leadership, articulating the business value, trade-offs, and scaling pathway for each partnership.
Qualifications- 10+ years' experience in technology strategic partnerships, AI product management, or technology delivery within top-tier financial institutions, or prior experience in corporate venture capital, innovation labs, accelerators, or high-growth AI startups.
- Demonstrated expertise executing partnership lifecycles, including scouting, technical evaluations, commercial structuring, PoC execution, and scaling third-party software into enterprise production.
- Technical or Product Fluency in Gen AI: Strong background in either AI Product Management or Generative AI Engineering, with working knowledge of LLMs (proprietary and open-weight), RAG architectures, agentic frameworks, fine-tuning, and model evaluation metrics.
- Communication & Executive Presence: Exceptional ability to synthesize complex technical, commercial, and operational findings into actionable executive recommendations.
Education- Bachelor's degree/University degree or equivalent experience
- Master's degree preferred
This job description provides a high-level review of the types of work performed. Other job-related duties may be assigned as required.
#LI-MN1Job Family Group: Technology
Job Family:Infrastructure
Time Type:Full time
Primary Location:Jersey City New Jersey United States
Primary Location Full Time Salary Range:$176,720.00 - $265,080.00
In addition to salary, Citi's offerings may also include, for eligible employees, discretionary and formulaic incentive and retention awards. Citi offers competitive employee benefits, including: medical, dental & vision coverage; 401(k); life, accident, and disability insurance; and wellness programs. Citi also offers paid time off packages, including planned time off (vacation), unplanned time off (sick leave), and paid holidays. For additional information regarding Citi employee benefits, please visit citibenefits.com. Available offerings may vary by jurisdiction, job level, and date of hire.
Most Relevant Skills Please see the requirements listed above.
Other Relevant Skills For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.
Anticipated Posting Close Date:Oct 20, 2026
