Principal Business Development Manager, HPC & AI Infrastructure (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)

DACH Region - Germany, Austria, Switzerland

Principal Individual Contributor · Strategic role · Full-time or part-time (min. 50%)

Location: Germany, remote, with regular travel to HPC centres in the region and to Barcelona

Semidynamics is a Barcelona-based fabless semiconductor company developing a complete silicon solution for AI inference and HPC in the cloud. Built on RISC-V and a disruptive memory architecture, our accelerators are purpose-built for LLMs, Agentic AI, and general compute. We are moving from a technology company to a commercial one: our first systems are being offered into European HPC centres and AI Factories together with our OEM partners, and we are looking for senior HPC industry talent to lead that transition in the DACH region.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Germany is home to Europe's most influential HPC centres (the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing sites JSC, HLRS and LRZ, plus the NHR network and other national centres), to the first European exascale system, and to a growing number of EuroHPC AI Factories and AI Gigafactory initiatives. Procurement in this market runs through formal tenders, usually led by system integrators and OEMs, and is won by vendors who understand how HPC centres evaluate, benchmark and buy systems.

This is not a classic territory sales role. You will be the senior HPC voice of Semidynamics in DACH: shaping how we approach HPC centres and their OEM partners, guiding the leadership team on how to turn a strong technology into a credible commercial offer, and opening the doors that matter. You will work closely with our Strategic Alliances lead, our CTO and our technical presales team.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Strategy & Market Development

• Define the DACH go-to-market for HPC centres, AI Factories and research infrastructures: which centres, which procurement cycles, which partners, in which order.

• Advise the leadership team on the commercial transition: positioning, offer structure (evaluation systems, early-access programmes, co-design partnerships), pricing logic and the proof points HPC buyers expect from a new silicon vendor.

• Track upcoming national and EuroHPC procurements in the region and help decide where Semidynamics bids, with whom, and how.

Business Development & Partnerships

• Build and maintain senior relationships with HPC centre directors, procurement and technical evaluation teams, and with the system vendors and integrators that bid into them (e.g. MEGWARE, Eviden, HPE, Lenovo).

• Support live tenders end to end with our OEM partners: bid/no-bid input, positioning of Semidynamics in the integrator's offer, review of technical and commercial responses, and follow-up with the customer.

• Convert relationships into signed outcomes: MoUs, letters of intent, evaluation agreements, qualified tender responses and first purchase orders.

• Connect Semidynamics with research collaborations and co-design projects (EuroHPC, Horizon Europe, national programmes) that create early reference sites.

Ecosystem & Visibility

• Represent Semidynamics at key HPC venues: ISC High Performance (Hamburg), SC, EuroHPC events, and Gauss Centre / NHR user and vendor meetings.

• Bring structured customer feedback (workloads, benchmarks, system and software requirements) back to Product and Engineering.

Internal Collaboration

• Mentor the wider BD team on HPC sales cycles and tender dynamics.

• Work with technical presales on benchmark strategy, system proposals and RFP responses.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

• Seniority: 20+ years in the HPC industry, with senior technical sales, technical director or system architect roles at system vendors, chip makers or interconnect companies.

• Industry background: direct experience selling or architecting HPC systems for European supercomputing centres, including participation in large public tenders. Experience with processors, accelerators or interconnects at a silicon vendor is a strong differentiator.

• Network: long-standing, decision-maker-level relationships across German and European HPC centres and with the OEMs and integrators that serve them.

• Strategic mindset: able to translate deep technology into a commercial plan, and comfortable advising founders and executives of a fast-moving scale-up.

• Languages: German native or fluent; business English essential.

• Education: degree in Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline; PhD advantageous.

SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED

• HPC system architecture: processors and accelerators, memory hierarchy and bandwidth, node and rack design, high-performance interconnects, storage and cooling.

• How HPC centres benchmark and evaluate systems (application benchmarks, HPL/HPCG, AI/ML inference and training workloads) and how these feed tender scoring.

• European HPC and AI infrastructure landscape: EuroHPC JU, AI Factories and AI Gigafactories, Gauss Centre, NHR, and the main national funding mechanisms.

• Working knowledge of AI inference requirements for LLMs and the competitive landscape (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Arm-based and RISC-V silicon).

• Familiarity with RISC-V and the European sovereignty agenda in computing is a plus.

WHAT WE OFFER

• A senior, high-impact role shaping how a European AI silicon company enters the HPC market.

• Flexible engagement model (full-time or part-time, employment or consulting) and remote work from Germany.

• Direct access to the founders and engineering leadership in Barcelona.

Semidynamics is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.