Associate or Senior Associate

Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 145 IPOs and 300 portfolio companies in the enterprise, infrastructure, consumer, and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer's global portfolio has included Anthropic, Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Fiverr, and Toast, and has more than $20 billion of assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Boston, and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer's storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti-Portfolio).

We are hiring an Investment Associate or Senior Associate to focus on the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem. As a “full stack” investor, you will be responsible for engaging across the full investment lifecycle, from thesis development through portfolio support. This role reports to Mike Droesch. You will work closely with him, while also receiving mentorship from other senior partners and team members at Bessemer, who will invest heavily in your development and growth.

We are looking for someone with an exceptional work ethic who is entrepreneurial, curious, resourceful, and competitive. The right candidate takes full ownership of programs and initiatives with minimal direction, knows how to figure things out, and knows when to ask for help. You are willing to tackle any task, no matter how big or small, and are drawn to unconventional ideas.

Ideal start date: Q3 2026 (flexible)

Location: San Francisco, CA — in office 3 to 4+ days per week

▸ Thesis development. create and refine investment roadmaps to guide firm strategy, and form and defend strong points of view on where AI infrastructure, agentic automation, and vertical AI applications are headed. No prior investing experience required.

▸ Sourcing. identify and build genuine relationships with promising founders, teams, and startups. Embed yourself in the ecosystem; you should want to be out at events, dinners, and meetups, not just working from a desk.

▸ Due diligence. lead financial analysis and diligence on customers, products, technology, teams, and markets.

▸ Investment recommendations. form judgements and present analyses and opinions to help drive investment decisions.

▸ Portfolio Support. assist portfolio companies with introductions, strategy, hiring, resources, and more. Attend board meetings.

▸ AI native. constantly using and experimenting with cutting edge products, technologies, and models, with strong, well-formed opinions on where the space is heading, not just what’s trending this week.

▸ Out in the world. you genuinely enjoy being in the community, attending events, showing up to founder meetups, and building real relationships rather than transactional ones. Sourcing isn’t a chore for you, it’s how you spend your free time too.

▸ Professional experience. ideally 2–4+ years of relevant professional experience in an operating role at a startup, as a founder, scientist, technologist, investor, or technology investment banker.

▸ Technical experience. ideally degree(s) or self-taught expertise in computer science, mathematics, machine learning,