Robotics Partnership Associate

Researchers at UC Berkeley have identified a “100,000-year data gap” - the gulf between what trained AI language models and what physical robots actually have to learn from. Closing that gap is the defining infrastructure challenge of the physical AI era. IRL is Instawork’s answer to it. We deploy skilled workers into real commercial and residential environments - kitchens, warehouses, hotel floors, homes - to capture the high-fidelity task data that the world’s leading Robotics labs use to train their foundation models. Read more here.

Instawork is building the data engine for the future of physical AI. To do that at scale, we need reliable, high-volume access to businesses across India whose skilled manual work becomes the training data for the next generation of robotics.

We are looking for a Partnerships Associate to secure that access — both by hunting new opportunities directly and by brokering relationships with the people who already control access to hundreds of businesses: association presidents, lenders, government officials, and enterprise leaders. Your job is to convert both cold outreach and high-trust institutional relationships into onboarding pathways at scale.

• →Broker access at scale. Identify, cultivate, and close relationships with high-leverage intermediaries — presidents of business associations, lenders, banks, politicians, civil servants, and large multinational corporations — who can grant direct, reliable access to hundreds of businesses.
• →Build outbound pipeline. Generate leads and open doors through cold calls, email, and LinkedIn — full-cycle, from first outreach to signed partner to collected data.
• →Turn one relationship into many. Convert a single institutional connection into structured, repeatable onboarding pathways for entire clusters of businesses.
• →Be the trusted liaison. Serve as the ongoing point of contact between Instawork Robotics and partners, managing these relationships over time rather than transacting once.
• →Navigate complex stakeholders. Move fluently across political, institutional, and commercial decision-makers to secure top-level buy-in and remove friction.
• →Hand off to the field. Work closely with field operations so unlocked networks translate into collected, high-quality data on the ground.

• Background in political consulting, public affairs, or government-facing roles.

• Prior experience as a liaison officer within telecom, banking, or other highly regulated enterprises.

• Proven track record as a business acquisition or partnerships lead at an e-commerce platform or B2B marketplace.

• Experience as a Large B2B Key Account Manager dealing with institutional clients or public sector accounts.

• Strong existing network and strategic contact base across relevant industry sectors.

• A demonstrable, activatable network among the gatekeepers above
• A founder mindset and bias for action — you don't wait for leads, you create them
• Comfort operating with senior political, institutional, and corporate stakeholders
• A track record of turning relationships into concrete access and outcomes
• Deep fluency in navigating India's institutional and commercial ecosystems

Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies—and we're just getting started!

Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.

Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

Ready to make an impact? Learn more at www.instawork.com/about.

Personnel Privacy Policy