Head of Data Partnerships (Data Ecosystem)

Location: San Francisco, CA (Hybrid) OR Remote (Americas, UTC-3 to UTC-10) Employment Type: FullTime Department: Partnerships Compensation: $180K – $250K • 0.01% – 0.15% Head of Data Partnerships (Data Ecosystem) You'll open the doors that unlock the most valuable data on the internet for Firecrawl — negotiating licensing agreements, data access deals, and content partnerships with publishers, platforms, and data owners who don't have a "Contact Sales" button. This is a dealmaker role. You'll identify targets, build relationships from nothing, structure creative agreements, navigate legal and policy complexity, and close deals that directly shape what Firecrawl can offer its customers. If you've ever sat across the table from a major content owner and walked away with a signed agreement, keep reading. Salary Range: $180,000–$250,000/year OTE (Range shown is for U.S.-based employees. Compensation may include base + performance bonus tied to deal outcomes. You can explore how we calculate compensation here: https://www.firecrawl.dev/careers/compensation.) Equity Range: Up to 0.15% Location: San Francisco, CA or Remote (Americas, UTC-3 to UTC-10) Job Type: Full-Time Experience: 5+ years in partnerships, business development, or data/content licensing Visa: US Citizenship/Visa required About Firecrawl Firecrawl is the easiest way to extract data from the web. Developers use us to reliably convert URLs into LLM-ready markdown or structured data with a single API call. In just a year, we've hit 8 figures in ARR and 90k+ GitHub stars by building the fastest way for developers to get LLM-ready data. We're a small, fast-moving, technical team building essential infrastructure super-intelligence will use to gather data on the web. We ship fast and deep. What You'll Do • Source and close data licensing deals where access is restricted: The most valuable data on the web isn't freely available. You'll identify the publishers, platforms, and data owners whose content would transform Firecrawl's product — and negotiate the agreements that give us access. These are deals where the default answer is "no" and you have to create the value proposition that flips it. • Build partnerships from nothing: You won't inherit a partner network or a warm pipeline. You'll start cold, build relationships at the VP and C-suite level, and turn those relationships into signed agreements. Proven 0→1 partnership building is the core of this role. • Negotiate licensing terms that work for both sides: You'll structure deals that make sense for Firecrawl and for the partner — navigating licensing rights, usage restrictions, attribution requirements, opt-out mechanisms, revenue sharing, and data access terms. You understand that sustainable partnerships require both sides to win. • Translate partner objections into product and engineering requirements: When a partner says "we can't do that because of X," you don't hear a dead end — you hear a product requirement. You work with engineering to build the technical capabilities that address partner concerns and unblock deals. • Navigate complex multi-stakeholder deal cycles: The deals you'll close involve legal, policy, editorial, business development, and executive leadership on the partner side. You know how to map stakeholders, manage parallel workstreams, and keep complex deals moving through organizations that don't move fast. • Build a repeatable partnerships playbook: As you close early deals, you'll document what works — target profiles, outreach frameworks, deal structures, legal templates — so the function can scale beyond you. What We're Looking For • Has closed real data, content, or API access deals where access was restricted. Not distribution partnerships. Not integration partnerships. Not co-marketing deals. You've negotiated agreements where a content owner, publisher, or platform company granted access to data or content they otherwise controlled — and you had to create the business case for why they should. If you can point to a specific licensing agreement you sourced, structured, and closed, we want to talk. • Proven 0→1 operator who built partnerships from nothing, not inherited them. You've walked into a company with no partner network, no warm intros, and no playbook — and you built the pipeline yourself. You sourced targets, ran outreach, built relationships from cold, and closed deals. If your best partnership story starts with "I inherited the relationship from my predecessor," this isn't the right fit. • Strong negotiator and closer, not just a relationship manager. You don't just "manage" partnerships — you close them. You're comfortable with hard negotiations, complex deal structures, and the pressure of getting to a signed agreement. You know the difference between a partner who's "interested" and a partner who's ready to sign, and you know how to bridge the gap. • Can translate partner objections into product and engineering requirements. You're technical enough to understand what Firecrawl builds and how it works. When a partner raises a concern about data handling, attribution, or usage restrictions, you can translate that into a clear product requirement and work with engineering to address it. You don't need to write code — but you need to speak the language. • Comfortable navigating licensing, usage rights, attribution, and opt-outs. You've worked with legal teams on both sides of a deal. You understand intellectual property basics, content licensing frameworks, and data rights well enough to structure terms and negotiate intelligently — even before the lawyers get involved. Backgrounds that tend to do well: Early partnerships or BD at a data-heavy or AI startup. Partnerships or licensing roles at a publisher, aggregator, or research organization, then crossing over to the buy side. Experience with publishers, data owners, or regulated/sensitive data. People who've worked the data, content, or publisher side at major platforms (Meta, X, Reddit, Google News) — specifically roles that dealt with content access or data partnerships, not ad sales. BD leads at AI companies who've negotiated data access agreements (Scale AI, OpenAI, Cohere, Perplexity). What We're NOT Looking For • Co-marketing or brand partnerships. If your experience is joint webinars, co-branded content, and "strategic alliance" decks that never produce revenue — this is a different kind of role. We need someone who closes licensing agreements, not marketing agreements. • Big-company "strategic alliances" operators. If your best work involved managing an existing portfolio of partners at a Fortune 500, with a team of partner managers under you and a legal team doing the negotiating — you'll be frustrated here. This is a solo operator role where you build from scratch. • Someone who hasn't personally closed deals. We need a closer, not a coordinator. If your role was facilitating deals that someone else negotiated, managing partner relationships that someone else built, or supporting a BD team without owning your own pipeline — this isn't the right fit. • Anyone who treats "partnership" as a relationship-building exercise without commercial outcomes. Every partnership you build here needs to result in a signed agreement that unlocks data access for Firecrawl's product. Relationships matter, but they're the means, not the end. A Note On Pace We operate at an absurd level of urgency because the window for what we're building won't stay open forever. If that excites you, keep reading. If it doesn't, no hard feelings — but this role probably isn't for you. Benefits & Perks Available to all employees • Salary that makes sense — $180,000–$250,000/year OTE, based on impact, not tenure • Own a piece — Up to 0.15% equity in what you're helping build • Generous PTO — 15 days mandatory, anything after 24 days, just ask (holidays excluded); take the time you need to recharge • Parental leave — 12 weeks fully paid, for moms and dads • Wellness stipend — $100/month for the gym, therapy, massages, or whatever keeps you human • Learning & Development — Expense up to $1,000/year toward anything that helps you grow professionally • Team offsites — A change of scenery, minus the trust falls • Sabbatical — 3 paid months off after 4 years, do something fun and new Available to US-based full-time employees • Full coverage, no red tape — Medical, dental, and vision (100% for employees, 50% for spouse/kids) — no weird loopholes, just care that works • Life & Disability insurance — Employer-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance — coverage for life's curveballs • Supplemental options — Optional accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and voluntary life insurance for extra peace of mind • Doctegrity telehealth — Talk to a doctor from your couch • 401(k) plan — Retirement might be a ways off, but future-you will thank you • Pre-tax benefits — Access to FSAs and commuter benefits (US-only) to help your wallet out a bit • Pet insurance — Because fur babies are family too Available to SF-based employees • SF HQ perks — Snacks, drinks, team lunches, intense ping pong, and peak startup energy • E-Bike transportation — A loaner electric bike to get you around the city, on us Interview Process • Application Review — Send us your stuff + a quick note on why this excites you. Show us specific deals you've closed — we care about agreements you sourced and signed, not partnerships you inherited. • Partnerships Deep Dive (~45 min) — Walk us through deals you've closed: how you found the target, built the relationship, structured the terms, and got to signature. We'll explore a live scenario — how you'd approach opening a data access conversation with a specific category of partner. We're looking for deal instincts, negotiation depth, and the ability to create value where none existed. • Founder Chat (~30 min) — Culture, pace, ownership, and how you like to work. This is with Caleb. Time for your questions too. • Paid Work Trial (1–2 weeks) — Test drive the real thing: advance a real partnership conversation with measurable progress. • Decision — We move fast after the trial.