AI Strategic Partnerships Business Development

Palo Alto Networks • Plano, TX

3d • Remote

About The Position

Our Mission At Palo Alto Networks®, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you’re ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you’re in the right place. Who We Are In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us! This role is remote, but distance is no barrier to impact. Our hybrid teams collaborate across geographies to solve big problems, stay close to our customers, and grow together. You will be part of a culture that values trust, accountability, and shared success where your work truly matters. Job Summary This position can be remote anywhere in the US with a preference in Santa Clara, Plano, Reston, or New York. This is not a traditional business development or alliances role. You will be a strategic business developer who sits at the intersection of AI security, partner ecosystems, and business model innovation. Where most partnership roles focus on relationship management, this one demands something rarer: the ability to identify a market opportunity, size it rigorously, build the business case, negotiate the deal, and then stay in the room to make sure it actually lands with customers. Three things set this role apart: Commercial Rigor: You bring genuine business modeling, pricing strategy, and opportunity sizing skills - you can build a model, stress-test it, and present it to a Business leader. Partner Ecosystem Depth: You understand how GSIs, management consulting firms, and technology ISVs think, sell, and build - and you know how to structure agreements that create durable, mutual value. Technical Credibility: You can translate a technology value proposition into a business value proposition, engage a CTO in a meaningful architecture conversation. Palo Alto Networks is seeking an AIRS Strategic Partnership Business Development Manager or Senior Manager to drive the commercial expansion of the Prisma AIRS (AI Runtime Security) portfolio through high-impact partnerships with Global System Integrators (GSIs), management consulting firms, and technology ISVs. This role sits within the AI Security Partnerships team and reports into the leadership of the AIRS strategic alliances function. You will be responsible for the full lifecycle of AIRS partnerships - from identifying and sizing opportunities, building use cases and business models, structuring and negotiating partnership agreements, to co-developing partner offerings and taking them to market. You will work hands-on: building slides, modeling financials, drafting agreements, and collaborating with partners to shape how Prisma AIRS is packaged, priced, and sold through the partner ecosystem. The right candidate brings a consulting background - rigorous, structured, and comfortable with ambiguity - combined with genuine curiosity about AI and a strong instinct for where technology trends create commercial opportunity. You are as comfortable building a business value slide for a partner CEO as you are walking a GSI technical architect through a Prisma AIRS integration pattern.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in strategic business development, partnerships, management consulting, or a combination - with a track record of closing complex, multi-stakeholder commercial agreements.
• Demonstrated ability to size markets, build financial models, develop pricing frameworks, and construct executive-quality business cases. Comfortable owning quantitative analysis end-to-end.
• Proven track record of negotiating and closing partnership agreements with senior stakeholders, navigating commercial, legal, and technical trade-offs to reach signed outcomes.
• Experience in management consulting or a consulting-adjacent role — bringing structured problem-solving, rigorous communication standards, and the ability to operate with ambiguity.
• Sufficient technical understanding to translate AI and cybersecurity technology value propositions into business terms, engage meaningfully with partner technical teams, and evaluate integration feasibility.
• Strong ability to build clean, structured, persuasive slides and written materials for executive audiences. Hands-on - you build the materials yourself.
• Experience working across marketing, finance, legal, and technology functions to align on and execute complex partnership deals. Able to move quickly without losing stakeholder alignment.
• Actively uses AI tools to improve productivity and output quality. Critically, understands the limitations of AI-generated content and knows how to identify, correct, and prevent low-quality outputs.
• Understanding of how GSIs, management consulting firms, and technology ISVs operate, sell, and build - and how to structure partnerships that create value within their business models.
• Prisma AIRS Portfolio: Technical mastery of AI Model Security, AI Red Teaming, AI Runtime Security, and AI Agent Security—including their core capabilities, deployment architectures, and API-driven interfaces.
• Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW): Command of architecture and deployment patterns across data center, cloud, and hybrid environments; specifically, how firewall policy enforcement secures enterprise AI workloads.
• CDSS (Cloud-Delivered Security Services): Familiarity with Threat Prevention, DNS Security, and Advanced WildFire, with an emphasis on their application to protecting modern AI infrastructure and mission-critical workloads.
• AI Gateway Configuration: Experience with inline security enforcement for LLM traffic, including prompt inspection, response filtering, and seamless integration with AIRS runtime control mechanisms.
• GSI Technology Stacks: Familiarity with how Deloitte, Cognizant, NTT, and Wipro architect and deliver AI solutions for enterprise clients; specifically, how they monetize and scale transformation practices.
• Identity & Access Management (IAM): Knowledge of securing agent identities, service accounts, and API key lifecycles to maintain least-privilege access within complex, agentic AI ecosystems.
• Cloud-Native AI Services: Command of AWS, Azure, and GCP AI/ML portfolios and their respective integration patterns with enterprise-grade security controls and enforcement mechanisms.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Business, Economics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience working at or extensively with major GSIs or top-tier management consulting firms, with a clear understanding of their practice economics, delivery models, and partner procurement processes.
• Prior experience in cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, or enterprise software partnerships. Familiarity with Prisma AIRS, NGFW, or CDSS is a meaningful differentiator.
• Experience structuring ISV partnerships, OEM agreements, or cloud marketplace listings as a vehicle for commercial scale.
• Prior experience in or alongside product management, enabling strong alignment with product strategy and roadmap conversations.
• MBA or equivalent advanced degree is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Identify, develop, and document compelling use cases for Prisma AIRS across GSI, consulting, and ISV partner contexts - covering AI model security, agent security, runtime protection, and red teaming.
• Rigorously size partnership opportunities using market data, customer segmentation, and partner revenue analysis. Build credible models that withstand scrutiny from finance and executive leadership.
• Stay ahead of developments in AI infrastructure, agentic systems, and enterprise AI adoption to identify where new use cases and partnership opportunities are emerging before they become obvious.
• Actively experiment with new use case hypotheses - engaging partners in structured pilots and POCs - to validate commercial potential before committing to full partnership structures.
• Develop and evaluate partnership business models - including resell, co-sell, embedded OEM, and managed service structures - that align partner incentives with Prisma AIRS growth objectives.
• Define pricing frameworks, discount structures, and revenue-sharing models for partner-led AIRS offerings. Ensure commercial terms are competitive, scalable, and operationally viable.
• Build compelling, data-driven business cases for partnership investments - covering market opportunity, revenue potential, cost to serve, and strategic rationale - tailored for both internal approval and partner alignment.
• Construct detailed financial models that project partnership revenue, partner economics, and return on investment across different growth scenarios. Comfortable owning a model end-to-end.
• Drive partnership engagements from initial outreach through signed agreement - owning the commercial narrative, managing partner stakeholders, and keeping momentum through complexity.
• Lead commercial negotiations with senior partner stakeholders including Heads of Alliances, Chiefs of Strategy, and General Counsel. Skilled at finding creative paths to agreement without sacrificing strategic value.
• Work closely with marketing, finance, legal, and technology teams at Palo Alto Networks to align on deal structure, approval, and execution. Able to move quickly across functions without losing the thread.
• Build and sustain senior relationships across partner organizations — engaging marketing, finance, legal, and technology leaders as peers. Comfortable in the room with executives and able to earn trust through substance.
• Co-develop partner-specific Prisma AIRS offerings - defining the service scope, packaging, pricing, and value proposition - tailored to how each partner type (GSI, consulting firm, ISV) goes to market.
• Build and execute joint go-to-market plans with partners, including co-marketing commitments, sales enablement, pipeline targets, and customer success milestones.
• Develop partner-facing commercial materials - business value slides, ROI frameworks, pricing summaries, and solution briefs - that equip partner sales and consulting teams to position Prisma AIRS effectively.
• Support partners in customer-facing settings - from executive briefings to commercial conversations - helping to close lighthouse deals that serve as the proof points for broader partner adoption.
• Build slides and written materials that make complex technology and commercial propositions immediately accessible to business audiences. Comfortable distilling a nuanced argument to a single clear page.
• Able to move fluidly between technical and business audiences - presenting an architecture diagram to a partner CTO and a revenue model to a partner CFO in the same day, adjusting register and depth accordingly.
• Communicate with senior stakeholders - internally across marketing, finance, legal, and technology, and externally at partner organizations - with the gravitas and clarity expected at the VP and C-suite level.
• Comfortable using AI tools to accelerate research, drafting, and analysis - and critically, able to identify and correct AI-generated errors, hallucinations, and low-quality outputs before they reach partners or leadership.

Benefits

• Compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location.
• The starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/com-missioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below.
• The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus.
• A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior