Head of Academic Partners & Programs, Fauna Robotics

This role owns the research/academic segment end-to-end as its relationship, program, sales, and customer-success lead. You’ll work hand-in-hand with partner functions — product, fleet operations & logistics, data/telemetry engineering, and our broader ecosystem team — who own the shared infrastructure, so you can stay focused on strategy, relationships, and impact.

Key job responsibilities
Segment Strategy & Sales
- Own the strategy for Fauna’s academic segment: map and prioritize target institutions and labs, define what makes Fauna the platform of choice for researchers, and set the adoption plan.
- Manage our pipeline of funded labs, principal investigators, and technical champions — qualifying opportunities on research value, funding path, influence, and expansion potential.
- Own the sales channel for the research segment — the paths by which labs and institutions acquire, deploy, and grow their Fauna fleets, always grounded in research fit.
- Partner with fleet operations, finance, and legal to structure the grant, sponsored-research, pricing, and purchase options that fit how universities actually buy.
- Build repeatable paths and clean handoffs from an individual researcher to lab- and institution-wide adoption.
- Serve as the connection between Amazon-internal research and academic teams and Fauna product/engineering, coordinating with Amazon Robotics and Amazon Science on shared interests.
University Partnerships & Grants
- Own the university grant program end-to-end: application, evaluation, awarding, and reporting.
- Design and operate the access mechanisms that get robots into researchers’ hands — grant, phased-access, and fellows-style programs, including eligibility, selection, onboarding, and program goals.
- Run pilots end-to-end; remove trust, funding, and technical blockers; drive real activation, retention, and expansion.
- Partner with Fauna Science and Scholars on program design and relationships with target universities.
- Support the Fauna intern program, linking academic partnerships to the talent pipeline.
External Engagement & Community
- Represent Fauna at key conferences (ICRA, RSS, CoRL, IROS, HRI) — sponsorships, workshops, talks, and demos.
- Convene and manage a Research Advisory Board to guide program design and the hardware/software roadmaps.
- Amplify state-of-the-art partner research and results on Fauna robots, in partnership with our marketing team.
Research Experience & Product Feedback
- Own the researcher relationship and experience for the university/research fleet — onboarding, enablement, and satisfaction.
- Partner with product and leadership to define what we want out of research: which capabilities it pressure-tests, what feedback should shape the hardware and software roadmaps, and how it strengthens Fauna.
- Translate community requirements into prioritized input for product and engineering.
- Turn early usage into product feedback, case studies, peer proof, and repeatable enablement.
- Partner with fleet operations and data/telemetry teams to keep researchers productive and their robots healthy.
Metrics & Reporting
- Define the program’s KPIs — robots deployed and utilization, researcher activation / retention / expansion, researcher NPS, publications on Fauna robots, community engagement, and grant pipeline health — and use them to inform strategy and leadership reviews.