AI & CLOUD · STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS · CONFIDENTIAL SEARCH
- Location: Remote (Seattle metro) or hybrid (San Francisco Bay Area or New York City)
- Type: Permanent, full-time
- Level: Director or Senior Director, based on experience
- Compensation: $200,000–$280,000 base, depending on level and experience, plus annual bonus and equity
- Reference: TRJG-0002
The opportunity
Our client, an established global enterprise software company, is making AI central to its product strategy and is creating a brand-new leadership role to own its most important technology alliances.
Today, relationships with key AI, cloud, and data-platform providers are spread across several engineering teams. This hire will bring them together under one strategy: assessing the current ecosystem, deciding where to invest, setting up a repeatable way of working with partners, and turning those relationships into real product outcomes.
You will sit within the CTO’s organization, work closely with senior product, engineering, and strategy leaders, and have significant visibility with the executive team. The role begins as a senior individual contributor position, with the opportunity to build a team as the function grows.
What you will do
- Set the partnership strategy. Map existing relationships with leading AI, cloud, and data-platform providers such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, AWS, and Snowflake. Identify gaps, overlaps, and the opportunities most worth pursuing, and build a prioritized partnership roadmap tied to company goals.
- Own the executive relationships. Act as the single accountable leader for strategic technology partners, building trusted, senior level connections on both the business and engineering sides of each partner.
- Turn partnerships into product. Bring partner roadmaps and new capabilities back to internal product and engineering teams as clear opportunity briefs. Help shape joint integrations, early access programs, and co-development efforts from first conversation through launch, while engineering retains ownership of architecture and build.
- Build the operating model. Create a consistent engagement and governance framework that brings together engineering, product, legal, marketing, and corporate strategy.
- Represent the company’s needs to partners. Stay close to each partner’s direction and advocate for the company’s technical requirements and customer use cases in partner planning discussions.
- Measure and report. Define objectives and success measures for each relationship and give leadership a clear, regular view of progress and impact.
- Support go-to-market. Work with marketing on joint announcements and messaging connected to partner integrations.
What you bring
- Roughly 10+ years in strategic technology partnerships, technical alliances, or closely related product or engineering leadership. Exceptional candidates with somewhat different paths will be considered.
- Direct, personal ownership of relationships with major AI, cloud, data, or developer platform companies (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Snowflake, OpenAI, Anthropic, or similar).
- A technical foundation, such as experience in software engineering, solutions architecture, technical product management, or technical account management. You don’t need to write code, but you are comfortable discussing APIs, system architecture, data flows, and the cost, performance, and trade-offs of AI and cloud options.
- A track record of joint integrations or co-developed solutions that reached customers, not just contracts or press releases.
- Experience building or significantly improving a partnership function: strategy, governance, cadence, and process, ideally in a fast-moving or ambiguous environment.
- Strong executive presence. You communicate directly and clearly, structure complex topics well, and influence without formal authority.
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Nice to have
- Background in enterprise B2B SaaS, ideally serving finance, operations, or other business-critical functions.
- An established network across the AI and cloud ecosystem.
- Familiarity with enterprise security and compliance requirements in regulated industries.
- MBA or other advanced degree.
Why this role
- A greenfield mandate to design the function the way you think it should work.
- Direct influence on how a mature, global software company adopts AI in its products.
- Close partnership with the CTO organization and broad exposure across product, strategy, and the executive team.
- A clear path to build and lead a team.
- Competitive base salary, annual bonus, and equity.
How to apply
This is a confidential search. The client’s name will be shared with qualified candidates after an initial conversation with The Robert James Group. All inquiries will be handled with discretion.
Email your CV to info@therobertjamesgroup.com quoting reference TRJG-0002.
Our client is an equal opportunity employer and considers all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. The compensation range above reflects a good-faith estimate of base pay for this role at the time of posting; final pay depends on level, experience, and location.
