About Yodo Labs

Yodo Labs is an applied AI research and engineering company based in Tokyo and Osaka. We build field visual AI systems for measurement, inspection, and safety verification -- the kind that runs on phones and edge devices your crews already carry. Rail, utilities, construction, manufacturing. Offline. Deployed in weeks.

About the Role

You know that the best technology in the world is worthless if nobody buys it. You have sat across the table from operations managers, safety leads, and CTOs who have real problems and shrinking patience for AI pitches that never deliver. You understand that selling a technical product is not about features -- it is about making someone believe their problem is solvable, and then proving it.

At Yodo Labs, business development is not a handoff game. You will be in the room when we scope the problem, on site when we validate the approach, and on the call when the client decides whether to move forward. You will work directly with our engineering team to translate what you hear in the field into projects we can actually deliver. The scoping conversation you lead today becomes the deployed system three weeks later.

We are a small team. There is no lead generation department, no sales ops team, no CRM with ten thousand contacts. There is you, a genuine technical product, and industries full of people who need it but do not know it exists yet.

What You Will Do

Identify and develop new business opportunities across rail, utilities, construction, and manufacturing -- industries where visual inspection, measurement, and safety verification are daily realities
Lead scoping conversations with prospective clients: understand their workflow, assess where AI fits, and determine whether we are the right team for the problem
Collaborate directly with engineers and researchers to translate client needs into feasible project plans -- you will need to understand what our technology can and cannot do
Own the client relationship from first conversation through pilot delivery and beyond -- we do not hand off accounts
Represent Yodo Labs at industry events, conferences, and site visits -- credibility in these industries comes from showing up

Representative activities

Meeting with a rail operator maintenance team to understand their clearance inspection workflow, identifying where manual measurement creates bottlenecks, and scoping a pilot for smartphone-based dimensional checks
Running a free two-week scoping engagement with a utility company, working alongside engineers to define what a live-line connection verification system would need to look like
Building a relationship with a construction general contractor by attending their safety review meetings and demonstrating how visual AI handles the compliance checks their crews currently do on paper
Partnering with our research team to develop case studies and technical content that resonates with operations leaders, not just IT departments

You may be a good fit if you have

Experience in B2B sales or business development, ideally selling technical products or services to industrial or infrastructure clients
The ability to earn trust with technical people -- you do not need to write code, but you need to understand what our systems do well enough to have credible conversations with engineers and operations leads
Strong communication skills in both English and Japanese -- our clients are primarily Japanese enterprises, and our team operates bilingually
Comfort with long sales cycles and complex stakeholder maps -- infrastructure clients do not buy on impulse
The initiative to build a pipeline from scratch -- we are not handing you a book of business
Genuine curiosity about how things work in the physical world -- the best conversations happen when you actually care about how rail clearances are measured or how utility connections are verified

Candidates need not have

Deep technical knowledge of AI or computer vision -- you will learn what you need from the team, and we do not expect you to explain model architectures
Experience in a specific industry vertical -- if you can learn a new domain quickly, the specific sector matters less than the skill
An MBA or traditional sales background -- some of the best business development people we know came from engineering, consulting, or operations

How to Apply

Send an email to team@yodolabs.jp with the subject line "Business Development (Full-time) -- [Your Name]". Please include:

Your CV or resume
A brief note on how you would approach building relationships in one of our target industries -- we are more interested in your thinking than a polished pitch
Any relevant examples of deals you have closed, partnerships you have built, or markets you have opened

Logistics

Location: Tokyo / Osaka, Japan -- remote-friendly Work style: Flexible hours; client meetings and site visits as needed Visa sponsorship: We sponsor work visas for Japan where possible

We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every qualification listed.