cosine - Founding Head of Telco

• 1. LEAD ENGAGEMENT WITH TELCO OPERATORS • Own Cosine’s day-to-day engagement with priority telco organisations, including national telecoms operators, managed service providers, network infrastructure providers, and telecoms technology teams. • Build on Cosine’s existing traction and reputation across sovereign AI, secure deployment, regulated infrastructure, and AI engineering to create senior routes into the right organisations. • Maintain a clear account map across key telco organisations, including executive sponsors, technology leaders, network engineering teams, enterprise product owners, security stakeholders, procurement teams, and commercial decision-makers. • Move relationships from broad sovereign AI or infrastructure interest into specific, practical areas where Cosine can create value. • 2. BUILD MULTI-THREADED SENIOR RELATIONSHIPS • Develop relationships across multiple divisions, business units, and seniority levels in each target account. • Engage CIO, CTO, CISO, Chief Digital Officer, network, platform, engineering, enterprise product, security, procurement, strategy, and commercial stakeholders. • Identify how priorities differ across teams, for example AI compute monetisation, software engineering productivity, customer-facing AI services, secure deployment, network automation, operational resilience, and legacy system modernisation. • Build enough trust that Cosine becomes part of the strategic conversation around telco AI, not just another vendor selling a developer tool. • 3. BUILD COSINE’S UNDERSTANDING OF TELCO SOVEREIGN AI PRIORITIES • Run structured discovery across telco organisations to understand what they truly care about in sovereign AI, AI coding, and enterprise automation. • Capture use cases, constraints, buying triggers, objections, deployment requirements, security expectations, procurement routes, partner dependencies, and success metrics. • Translate telco customer signal into internal intelligence for sales, partnerships, product, research, engineering, marketing, and leadership. • Build a sector view of where Cosine has the strongest right to win, including priority use cases, highest-intent accounts, likely buyer personas, partner routes, and repeatable commercial narratives. • Priority areas to explore include: • Sovereign AI coding and software engineering inside telco-controlled infrastructure. • Helping telcos compete with hyperscalers by offering AI coding capabilities that run on their own infrastructure. • AI adoption where source code, credentials, operational data, or infrastructure cannot leave the customer’s control boundary. • Monetisation of GPU, cloud, and sovereign infrastructure investments through AI developer tooling. • Legacy OSS, BSS, network, billing, provisioning, and internal platform modernisation. • Software assurance, auditability, testing, review, and governance across high-scale engineering teams. • Network automation, operational resilience, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure workflows. • Deployment models across telco cloud, customer VPC, on-prem, sovereign cloud, and air-gapped environments where required. • 4. BUILD TOWARDS COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES • Convert relationship-building, technical education, and market development into qualified pipeline opportunities. • Identify where there is a real business problem, budget owner, technical champion, procurement path, partner route, and reason to act now. • Shape opportunities into concrete next steps: discovery sessions, technical deep-dives, workshops, pilots, proof-of-concepts, deployment planning, commercial proposals, or partner-led opportunities. • Work with the wider GTM team to move qualified telco opportunities through the sales cycle. • Keep a clear view of account status, stakeholder map, open actions, risks, next steps, deployment route, partner involvement, and commercial likelihood. • The role should focus deeply on commercial pull: serious conversations, mapped accounts, live opportunities, pilots, partner routes, and ultimately revenue. • 5. WORK CLOSELY WITH PARTNERSHIPS ON TELCO ECOSYSTEM ROUTES • Work alongside Cosine’s Head of Partnerships to build and manage relationships with the partners that matter in telco: systems integrators, cloud infrastructure partners, managed service providers, hardware/GPU partners, consultancies, and telco technology vendors. • Identify where partners can create account access, support deployment credibility, provide bid access, or help Cosine become part of broader telco cloud, sovereign AI, or infrastructure transformation programmes. • Build joint account plans with priority partners where there is a clear telco opportunity. • Support partner positioning, co-sell motions, marketplace routes, bid strategy, framework access where relevant, and teaming discussions. • Ensure partner engagement is commercially purposeful, with clear ownership, target accounts, opportunity hypotheses, and follow-up actions. • 6. NAVIGATE TELCO ROUTES TO MARKET • Build a clear view of the commercial and technical routes that matter for Cosine in telco. • Understand where Cosine should pursue direct enterprise engagement, partner-led opportunities, telco cloud productisation, marketplace routes, pilots, internal engineering rollouts, or customer-facing AI offerings delivered through the telco. • Help shape engagement approaches that speak to telco-specific priorities: infrastructure monetisation, customer retention, sovereign capability, enterprise product differentiation, regulated customer demand, and competition with hyperscalers. • Use targeted briefings, technical working sessions, account planning, partner conversations, and high-quality written materials to progress opportunities. • Work with legal, commercial, partnerships, product, engineering, and leadership to ensure telco engagement is commercially useful and technically credible. • 7. HELP BUILD THE GTM TEAM IN TELCO • Help define what the telco GTM motion should become as Cosine scales. • Build the early playbook for account selection, stakeholder mapping, discovery, qualification, telco cloud positioning, partner-led entry, pilot design, deployment planning, and commercial progression. • Help recruit, onboard, and develop future GTM hires focused on telco and infrastructure providers. • Establish the operating cadence for the sector: account reviews, pipeline tracking, partner follow-up, customer insight capture, pilot tracking, and internal reporting. • Work closely with SDRs, partnerships, marketing, founders, enterprise sales, and the Head of Partnerships to make telco a repeatable vertical. • ___________________________________________________________________________ • WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE IN THE FIRST 6 MONTHS • Multi-threaded relationships established across the most important telco accounts. • The three top priority telco accounts are established, with account maps, stakeholder coverage, deployment hypotheses, partner strategy, and business cases set out. • A structured view of telco sovereign AI use cases, buyer priorities, objections, deployment models, partner routes, and buying triggers. • Qualified opportunities progressing into discovery, technical deep-dives, pilots, partner motions, deployment planning, or commercial proposals. • Clear working rhythm with the Head of Partnerships on telco ecosystem partners, SI relationships, infrastructure partners, and co-sell routes. • A clear telco GTM playbook that future hires can build from. • SUCCESS METRICS • RELATIONSHIP AND MARKET DEVELOPMENT • Number of priority telco accounts actively engaged. • Number of senior stakeholder relationships built across target accounts. • Number of multi-threaded accounts with executive, technical, commercial, cloud, security, and procurement coverage. • Quality of customer insight captured on sovereign AI priorities, infrastructure requirements, deployment constraints, and use cases. • COMMERCIAL PROGRESSION • Qualified telco opportunities created. • Discovery sessions, technical deep-dives, pilots, partner motions, or proposals initiated. • Pipeline generated or influenced. • Conversion of reputation and senior engagement into live commercial next steps. • Evidence that Cosine is becoming a serious strategic partner in target telco accounts. • PARTNER AND ECOSYSTEM ENGAGEMENT • Priority SI, cloud, infrastructure, and telco technology partner relationships mapped and actively managed alongside the Head of Partnerships. • Joint account plans created with the most relevant partners. • Co-sell routes, bid opportunities, marketplace routes, or partner-led entry points identified. • Clear evidence that partner engagement is creating access, credibility, or commercial opportunity. • TEAM AND OPERATING SYSTEM • Telco account map and stakeholder tracker built and maintained. • Partner and ecosystem map built and maintained with clear ownership and next steps. • Repeatable cadence established for account reviews, partner follow-up, pilot tracking, and sector reporting. • Future telco GTM hiring profile defined.