Commercial and Business Development (Founding Team)

About Riven

Our mission is to leverage fundamental science and the exponential growth of computational power to revolutionize industrial chemistry. We are integrating autonomous laboratories, computational modeling, and AI to systematize the design, de-risking, and deployment of new chemical capabilities. Our work is deeply interdisciplinary and closes the loop between fundamental physics and industrial deployment.

We are starting with critical minerals because they underpin virtually every facet of modern life—including energy infrastructure, compute architecture, and defense systems—and are at the heart of a generational effort to reindustrialize the west. We intend to dramatically reduce the time and cost required to scale new mineral processing capacity.

About the role

This founding role will own Riven's revenue and go-to-market, including prioritizing markets, architecting our earliest enterprise deals, building the models that prove each deal's economics, and converting pilots into scaled, multi-site deployments. You will work as a core strategic partner to the CEO and a credible face for Riven with boards, investors, and the C-suites of the world's largest miners. You will be pushed to understand and execute across many domains simultaneously as we rewrite industrial chemistry.

Riven is hiring a lean, interdisciplinary team and experience spanning multiple roles is welcome. Apply to whichever role is closest to your skillset.

Initial Responsibilities

• Own commercial strategy and revenue: target segments, market-entry sequencing, and pricing and packaging aligned to the economics of a hardware-enabled platform.

• Inform product iteration and actively shape the product roadmap at a pre-seed company.

• Architect enterprise partnerships spanning service, infrastructure, and technology.

• Develop commercial models that support decision-making, including unit economics, ROI frameworks, and scaling scenarios.

• Partner directly with the CEO on market prioritization, deal strategy, board discussions, fundraising narratives, and investor engagement.

• Support the build and scale of both the commercial organization and Riven more broadly, including contributing to operating norms and firmwide institutional best practices.

Qualifications

• 8+ years experience commercializing hardware-enabled, infrastructure-based, or operationally complex platforms, including phased deployment from pilot through scaled, multi-site rollout.

• Deep mining and critical-minerals credibility, with a live network from the majors through junior miners and the ability to engage with senior leaders at those organizations.

• A track record taking technical early-stage products to market, including building go-to-market motions where none existed before.

• Capital-formation fluency, including comfort carrying a fundraising narrative and holding cap-table, financing, and shareholder conversations.

• Hands-on model ownership, including building and defending unit economics and deal models in Excel rather than delegating them.

• Working understanding of hydrometallurgy and solvent extraction, or comparable process-industry fluency.

• Clear interdisciplinary communication and the curiosity to quickly learn and execute in new domains.

• Ability to prioritize, execute, and collaborate with a high degree of agency, a willingness to be wrong, and the ambition to build something that has never existed before.

• Trust, humor, rigor, and an excitement to work in a scrappy, interdisciplinary early-stage environment.

Bonus Points

• Experience opening new markets or geographies.

• Early-stage or startup experience, and building rather than inheriting a commercial function.

• Fluency with government and non-dilutive capital (grants, public programs), and comfort folding a light government-relations scope into the commercial mandate rather than needing a dedicated hire.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status, medical condition or disability.

Compensation

The base salary range for this role is $170,000 – $240,000 per year.

Compensation decisions are made based on track-record, seniority, and skill set. Additional consideration can be given to candidates with exceptional experience.