Business Development Associate

Why This Role Exists

We build and operate blockchain infrastructure for financial market infrastructure: settlement, custody and clearing institutions that put real value on the networks we run. We have signed clients with production dates this quarter and a platform standing on its own for the first time. Our pipeline of banks, custodians and market operators is growing faster than we can work it properly.

You are the first hire on the Business Development team. You own the pipeline data and act as the coordination layer between prospects, engineering and leadership. You also make sure that what we promise in a sales conversation matches what we can deliver. When someone asks where a deal stands, what a client actually asked for, or whether a commitment is real, you're the person with the answer.

What You'll Own

• Building pipeline with financial institutions: banks, custodians, broker-dealers, asset managers and market infrastructure providers. You work out who to approach, find the right person in each institution, and get the first meeting.
• Account research before every conversation. You should know a prospect's settlement stack, where their collateral and liquidity problems are, what they've said publicly about tokenization, and who else they're talking to. Nobody should walk into a meeting cold.
• Qualifying opportunities against what we actually sell: access, execution, interoperability and network engines, plus forward-deployed engineering engagements, managed hosting, interop settlement and sequencer services. That means working out whether there's a real budget, a real owner, a real timeline and a real problem we solve, and saying so early when there isn't.
• Supporting live deal cycles, including discovery notes, meeting prep, follow-ups, RFP and RFI responses, security questionnaires and due-diligence packs. Institutional sales cycles are long and documentation-heavy. You keep them moving.
• Pipeline and CRM discipline. Stages, next steps and close dates should reflect reality, and the forecast should hold up when someone questions it.
• Market and competitive intelligence. Enterprise post-trade vendors don't publish their pricing, so what we know about it comes from conversations. You collect it, organize it and make it useful for pricing and positioning.
• Translating between two worlds. Our buyers speak repo, collateral, DvP, cut-off times and operational risk. Our engineers speak sequencers, finality and nodes. You need to be fluent enough in both to bring back an accurate account of what the client asked for.
• Outbound materials and messaging, working with Marketing and Product on one-pagers, case narratives, event follow-up and sequences that sound like they were written by someone who understands the client's business.
• Events and ecosystem presence, including industry conferences, working groups and partner channels where institutional decision-makers show up.
• Capturing client feedback for Product. What prospects ask for, what makes them hesitate and why deals stall should all reach the roadmap in a structured way.
• Using AI in the work every day for research, account mapping, first drafts and meeting prep, held to the same bar for accuracy as anything else sent to a client.

Two Lines Sit Outside This Role and You'll Work with Both Constantly

• Solutions and forward-deployed engineering own technical scoping, architecture and delivery commitments. You bring them in at the right moment with the right context, and you never promise a date or capability they haven't agreed to.
• Legal and Finance own contract terms, pricing approvals and commercial structure. You make sure deals reach them clean and early, not the week before signature.

What We Are Looking for

• 2-4 years in B2B tech sales, business development, or a client-facing role at a financial institution, fintech or market infrastructure provider.
• Working knowledge of how institutional finance operates: trade lifecycle, clearing and settlement, custody, collateral. You don't need to be a post-trade expert, but you need to follow the conversation and ask good questions.
• Real curiosity about onchain infrastructure and tokenized assets, and the ability to explain why it matters to a treasury or operations buyer without resorting to hype.
• Strong written communication. Your emails, notes and summaries are clear, short and accurate.
• Organized and persistent. Deals here take quarters, not weeks. You keep threads alive without being a nuisance.
• Commercially sharp. You can tell interest from intent, and you'd rather disqualify a deal early than carry it on hope.
• Comfortable in a company that is young and still building. The playbook is being written now, and you'll help write it.
• Direct. This team has a low tolerance for polish over substance. Say the hard thing early, and say it kindly.
• Coachable and collaborative. You want feedback, you act on it, and you make the people around you more effective.

Useful, Not Required

• Experience selling into, or working at, a bank, custodian, CSD, exchange or clearing house.
• Familiarity with Ethereum, EVM networks or permissioned blockchain deployments.
• Exposure to repo, FX, stablecoins or tokenized treasuries/RWAs.
• Experience with enterprise procurement: RFPs, vendor due diligence, InfoSec reviews.

What This Role Is Not

• Not a volume-dialing SDR seat. We'd rather have ten well-researched conversations than a thousand generic touches.
• Not someone who overpromises to book a meeting. Our buyers remember.
• Not someone who waits to be told what to do next, or who doesn't ask why an account matters.
• Not someone who needs to be the loudest voice in the room. Listen first, then bring the insight.
• Not a solutions-engineering role. You need to be credible technically, but you aren't expected to architect deployments.

Pay and benefits

We are a fully remote, globally distributed company. We hire the best people wherever they are, work asynchronously, and judge each other on impact rather than hours or location. We offer competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and the chance to work on genuinely open source software at the frontier of web3.