Founding Go-to-Market Manager (Events & BD)

Compensation: $130k – $190k • 0.05% – 0.25%

Position Title: Go-to-Market Manager (Events & BD)

Role Type: Full-time (First GTM Hire)

Location: 450 Bryant St, San Francisco (Hybrid)

Reports To: CEO

Compensation: $130,000 – $190,000 Base Salary (Fixed Base, No Variable Split) + Equity

About Palatial

Palatial builds foundational data and simulation infrastructure for Physical AI. We enable robotics companies and AI labs to convert real-world environments into sim-ready physics assets (3DGS, USD, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo) for policy training and evaluation. As a growing 30-person team, we are hiring our first Go-to-Market Manager to lead our event execution, partnership strategy, and customer discovery. Role Overview

As our Go-to-Market Manager (Events & BD), you will manage our front-of-funnel commercial engagement. You will lead our conference and event strategy, cultivate industry references and Physical AI partner relationships, qualify inbound customer inquiries from our platform, scope client needs, and draft initial proposals for CEO review and closing.

This is a hands-on execution role for a seasoned operator who can credibly speak the language of robotics engineers while managing commercial partnerships, event mechanics, and customer proposal drafting.

Key Responsibilities (In Order of Priority)

1. Trade Shows & Proprietary Events: Own end-to-end conference strategy, booth execution, and logistics for major industry gatherings (e.g., CoRL, ICRA, IROS, CVPR). Plan and host small, curated, approval-based dinners and happy hours (via Luma) co-hosted with industry partners to engage robotics researchers and engineering leaders. Convert conference and event interactions into qualified customer follow-ups.

2. Industry References: Build and maintain strong relationship touchpoints with key customer advocates and industry champions across the robotics and Physical AI space. Coordinate customer reference calls, success stories, and case study testimonials in partnership with client teams.

3. Partnerships with Physical AI Companies: Identify, negotiate, and cultivate strategic co-marketing and ecosystem partnerships with non-competing robotics OEMs, simulation providers, and Physical AI infrastructure players. Drive joint event initiatives, shared meetups, and ecosystem alignment with key technical partners (e.g., NVIDIA ecosystem).

4. Inbound Enterprise Discovery & Proposal Drafting: Lead first-round discovery conversations with inbound enterprise customers coming in through our platform.

Conduct thorough technical discovery to scope client requirements, workflows, timelines, and budget constraints.

Draft comprehensive, structured proposals and requirements summaries, handing them off to the CEO for commercial negotiation and final decision. Once a contract is signed, hand the account to the Technical Account Manager (Seat 3), who owns delivery and renewals.

1. Secondary Outbound Support (As Needed):

Perform targeted outreach and follow-up to specific high-value accounts as secondary bandwidth allows.

Qualifications & Requirements

Client & Partnership Track Record: 2–4+ years of direct experience working with enterprise customers, negotiating ecosystem/B2B partnerships, and managing commercial discovery workflows in AI, robotics, simulation, developer tools, or enterprise SaaS.

Event Operations Mastery: Proven track record managing trade show presence, booth mechanics, and hosting curated, high-touch executive/researcher dinners and meetups.

Technical Fluency (Required): Ability to fluently discuss technical details with robotics engineers. Comfort with domain concepts (e.g., Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, USD, sim-to-real pipelines, 3D Gaussian Splatting) is essential to scope customer needs accurately. (Note: You are not expected to code or build custom simulations).

Proposal & Scoping Skills: Strong analytical and written capabilities to translate customer technical discussions into clear, structured commercial proposals and requirement documents.

Execution & Ownership: A self-driven operator capable of managing events, partner discussions, and customer scoping independently.