Director of Strategic Partnerships

Cobot•Santa Clara, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Cobot’s vision requires more than great technology—it depends on a tightly orchestrated ecosystem of partners across hardware, software, infrastructure, research, deployment, and go-to-market. We’re seeking a Director of Strategic Partnerships to architect and scale that ecosystem, owning Cobot’s external partnership strategy across robotics, AI infrastructure, frontier technology, and strategic GTM channels. Reporting directly to company leadership, this high-impact role operates at the intersection of product, engineering, business development, sales, and executive strategy to define who we partner with, why it matters, and how those relationships accelerate product velocity, deepen technical differentiation, and drive faster deployments. The ideal candidate is a systems thinker and builder who sees partnerships as a strategic weapon—designing the ecosystem model and driving it into reality. Join us to reimagine the future of human-robot interaction. Collaborative Robotics is a team of innovators and builders redefining the future of human-robot interaction. We are working to realize a world where robots are a trusted extension of your surroundings. They work, adapt, and react around you. Not the other way around. The role is based in Santa Clara (HQ) or Seattle, with remote options in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, Boulder, Denver, or Pittsburgh.

Requirements

10–15+ years in alliances, strategic partnerships, business development roles.
Prior experience building formal partner programs or ecosystems from scratch.
Track record of partnerships that materially accelerated product development, deployments or revenue.
Experience working closely with engineering and product teams on technically complex initiatives.
Startup or high-growth experience strongly preferred.
Exceptional strategic thinking paired with hands-on execution ability.
Sophisticated negotiation skills across commercial, technical, and strategic dimensions.
Ability to operate cross-functionally and influence without authority in fast-moving organizations.
Comfort managing ambiguity, incomplete information, and evolving priorities
Clear, concise communicator who can translate complex partnership dynamics into executive-level insights.
Must have and maintain US work authorization.

Nice To Haves

Deep curiosity about robotics, Physical AI, and how real-world systems actually work.
Bias toward ownership: you don’t wait for permission to fix structural problems.
Systems-oriented thinker who sees ecosystems, not just individual deals.
High standards for rigor and integrity—partnerships must create real value, not optics.
Calm and effective under pressure, complexity, and long decision cycles.
Long-term oriented, with the patience to build durable advantage rather than quick wins.

Responsibilities

Define and lead Cobot’s global alliances strategy across robotics hardware, autonomy stacks, and GTM and deployment partners, developing clear partnership theses, value exchange models, and prioritization frameworks aligned with product and go-to-market strategy.
Continuously evaluate emerging technologies, research efforts, and ecosystem shifts to determine where partnerships create structural advantage versus where Cobot should build in-house, ensuring the company remains ahead of the curve.
Source, structure, negotiate, and close high-impact strategic alliances end-to-end across robotics, AI infrastructure, and deployment ecosystems.
Design partnership models spanning technical integrations, joint development, co-selling, channel, and strategic distribution while navigating complex multi-party relationships with engineering, legal, procurement, and executive stakeholders.
Partner closely with product and engineering leadership to align partnerships with roadmap priorities, translating technical capabilities and constraints into partnership structures that accelerate learning, deployment, and ecosystem adoption.
Enable joint development, integrations, pilots, and proofs of concept with partner teams while helping partners adopt Cobot’s platform in ways that strengthen—rather than dilute—Cobot’s technical differentiation.
Partner closely with Sales and GTM leadership to design partner-driven distribution and deployment strategies, enabling co-selling motions, joint value propositions, and sales enablement while supporting complex customer deployments requiring multi-vendor coordination and tracking partner-sourced and partner-influenced revenue, deployments, and strategic outcomes.
Represent Cobot externally with senior leaders across robotics, AI, industrial, defense, logistics, and government-adjacent ecosystems while supporting leadership in high-stakes partnership discussions, strategic planning, and board-level narratives, and serving as a trusted internal advisor on ecosystem strategy, competitive positioning, and build-vs-partner decisions.
Define success metrics, operating cadence, and internal processes for alliances while building repeatable playbooks for sourcing, evaluating, launching, and managing partnerships.
Hire and lead a high-caliber partnerships team as the ecosystem grows, establishing a culture of rigor, clarity, and accountability in how partnerships are formed and maintained.