Corporate Development (Corp Dev)

Facebook buying Instagram for $1B, Microsoft buying LinkedIn for $26B, Salesforce buying Slack for $27B.

There is a well-established strategy where tech companies with a large amount of cash buy smaller companies to integrate their technology, gain access to their talent, or simply remove a potential rival.

The Corporate Development team, or CorpDev, are responsible for handling mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities within a technology company.

Their primary responsibilities are to find and analyze new potential deals, build financial models and business cases to present to upper management, work with departments like legal, HR and engineering to perform due diligence, and undertake acquisition negotiations with the target company.

Given the nature of their work, corporate development roles are usually found in more established technology companies that have the financial resources needed to acquire other companies.

The teams tend to be quite small, working closely with other departments in their company to analyze potential deals, for example the engineering team will help them see whether a product they are looking to acquire can be integrated into their systems. CorpDev will present their research and analysis to the executive team for final approval of the deal, and if it goes ahead they may also help with the post-acquisition integration process.

Is CorpDev right for you?

People who work in corporate development are expected to have strong financial modeling, strategy, communication, and presentation skills. The roles usually require a degree in a subject related to finance, and people are generally expected to have practical work experience with large financial transactions.

The roles are a natural fit for people who are moving over from fields like investment banking, private equity or strategy consulting.

CorpDev salaries

Starting salaries for analyst roles in the larger tech companies are in the lower $100k range, moving to $150k–$250k plus bonuses per year for management roles. This may be less than similar roles in the traditional banking and finance worlds but many people find corporate development appealing as the work/life balance at established technology companies can be much better, with standard 40-50 hour work weeks, weekends off etc.