Job Description

Associate Practice Engagement Manager – Startup Partnerships & GTM

Role Summary

The Associate Practice Engagement Manager will drive Infosys' startup partnership and Go-to-Market strategy for the segment, owning a portfolio of startup accounts end-to-end — from prospecting and pre-sales through to deal closure and early client engagement. This role sits at the intersection of partnership development, market intelligence, and sales execution, and requires someone equally comfortable building relationships with startup founders/leadership and running structured, multi-stakeholder sales cycles — with a strong grasp of AI and Agentic AI trends to credibly engage the current startup ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

Market Development

• Perform competitive analysis for the segment across his/her account portfolio(s) — primary focus area.
• Collaborate with other ADS' (Account Delivery/Development Specialists) to build a unified, segment-wide view across existing account portfolios.
• Partner with the UPAM team on sector-specific competitor analysis using outside sources, bringing Infosys' first-hand market experience to validate and enrich corporate/unit-level competitor research — especially for accounts not yet in the Infosys customer base.
• Proactively identify and pipeline new prospects within the startup ecosystem, with particular attention to AI-native and Agentic AI startups shaping emerging market categories.

Startup Partnerships & GTM

• Identify, evaluate, and onboard high-potential startups as strategic partners, aligned to Infosys' GTM priorities for the segment — including AI/Agentic AI startups, platforms, and tooling providers.
• Build and manage a portfolio of startup accounts, each potentially spanning multiple client relationships, and drive coordinated engagement across them.
• Design and execute GTM plans for startup partnerships, including joint value propositions, co-sell motions, and market positioning — incorporating AI-led differentiation where relevant.
• Act as the primary relationship owner between Infosys and partner startups, ensuring alignment on commercial and strategic objectives.
• Stay current on AI industry trends — Generative AI, Agentic AI, AI agents/orchestration frameworks, and emerging AI infrastructure/tooling — to identify partnership and co-innovation opportunities.

Pre-Sales & Sales Cycle Ownership

• Own the pre-sales process for startup and multi-client opportunities — qualifying leads, shaping solution narratives, and building compelling client-facing presentations and proposals, including AI/Agentic AI-enabled solution constructs where applicable.
• Drive the end-to-end sales cycle: prospecting, opportunity qualification, solutioning, proposal development, negotiation, and closure.
• Coordinate with delivery, domain, and technical (including AI/GenAI CoE) teams to ensure pre-sales commitments translate into deliverable solutions.
• Track pipeline health, forecast accurately, and report on deal progression against sales targets.

Technical and Professional Requirements

Preferred Skills

• Foundational → Pre-Sales → Processes → Presentation Skills
• Domain → Sales → Sales Planning
• Domain → Sales → Sales Execution
• Domain → Partnerships/Alliances → Partner Ecosystem Development
• Foundational → Business Development → Prospecting & Lead Qualification
• Technology → Artificial Intelligence → Agentic AI / GenAI Fundamentals (understanding of AI agents, multi-agent orchestration, LLM-based automation, and emerging AI platform ecosystems)
• Domain → Emerging Tech → AI/GenAI Market Awareness (ability to evaluate startup AI capabilities and map them to client/enterprise use cases)

Work Experience

Extensive experience, with demonstrated exposure to startup ecosystems, partnership/alliance management, and pre-sales or sales cycle ownership in a B2B/enterprise context. Working knowledge of AI/Generative AI/Agentic AI trends and their application in enterprise and startup GTM strategies is highly desirable.