Founding Head of Partnerships

Arcade•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Everyone's talking about AI. But here's the truth: ChatGPT can't send your emails. It can't book your flights. It can't even order you lunch. Why? Because AI is trapped in a chat box. It can't take real actions in the real world. We are changing that forever. We're not just building another AI company - we're creating the infrastructure that will power every AI application you'll use in the future. The Revolution Needs You Every AI app needs agentic "tools" - special functions that let AI models take real actions. Without tools, AI can only chat. With tools, AI can actually do things. We're building the definitive tools catalog and tool-calling platform that will unlock AI's true potential. Think Zapier for AI Actions. Think Auth0 for AI. Think really big. Why This Is The Opportunity of a Lifetime Founder-Market Fit : Our CEO previously founded Stormpath (acquired by Okta), where he created the first Authentication API for developers. He's done this before - and this time the market is 10x bigger. Our CTO led the vector database team at Redis, shipped 100+ LLM applications, and is a contributor to LangChain and LlamaIndex. He knows this space better than anyone. Dream Team : We've assembled authentication, integrations, distributed systems, and AI experts from Okta, Redis, Microsoft, Splunk, Ngrok, Google, Airbyte, Disney, and HPE who've built and founded multiple successful developer platforms. Perfect Timing : We're at the inflection point of AI adoption. The biggest problem isn't better models - it's connecting AI to real-world actions. That's us. Massive Market : We're building critical infrastructure for the biggest technological shift of our generation. Every AI app will need what we're building. Backed By The Best: Our investors have backed Databricks, Clickhouse, MongoDB, Perplexity, Cohere, ScaleAI, Confluent, Elastic, and Firebase. They see what we see - this is going to be huge. The Challenge Arcade is the MCP runtime that makes AI agents production-ready, and our partner ecosystem is central to how enterprises discover, evaluate, and deploy us. We've already established relationships with AWS, Azure, LangChain, MongoDB, Redis, and others - but we need someone to turn these early relationships into a scalable, revenue-generating partner program. This is a founding role. You'll start as a hands-on individual contributor who owns every aspect of partner strategy and execution - from co-sell motions and joint solution development to marketplace listings and partner marketing. As the program matures and delivers results, you'll have the opportunity to build and lead a team beneath you. We're not selling a simple SaaS tool. We're selling the critical infrastructure layer between AI models and real-world actions, with secure agent authorization, user-specific permissions, and enterprise-grade governance. That means you need to understand how cloud partnerships, technology alliances, and ecosystem-led growth actually work at the infrastructure level - and have the credibility to be in the room with partner engineering and business development leaders at AWS, Microsoft, and the leading AI frameworks. This is a build-the-program-from-zero, get-on-planes, create-the-playbook opportunity.

Requirements

7+ years of experience in technology partnerships, alliances, or business development at a B2B infrastructure or developer tools company
Proven track record of building partner programs that generated measurable pipeline and revenue, ideally from early stage or near-zero
Direct experience working with cloud provider partner programs (AWS, Azure, or GCP) including marketplace listings and co-sell motions
Deep understanding of the enterprise software ecosystem and how partnerships drive infrastructure adoption decisions
Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally across Sales, Product, Marketing, and Engineering to operationalize partner motions
Strong executive presence and relationship-building skills - you're comfortable in the room with VPs and GMs at major cloud providers and technology companies
Experience at a startup or high-growth environment (ideally Series A-C, under 100 employees) where you built process and structure, not just inherited it
AI-curious and forward-leaning - you understand how MCP, agent frameworks, and AI infrastructure fit together and can articulate Arcade's value to technical partner audiences
Scrappy, hungry, and comfortable operating without a playbook or heavy support infrastructure
Located anywhere USA, ideally SF, Austin, New York or Seattle

Nice To Haves

Previous experience building partnerships at an infrastructure company during a major platform shift (cloud, mobile, API economy, or AI)
Existing relationships at AWS, Microsoft/Azure, LangChain, MongoDB, Redis, or similar ecosystem players
Experience with developer community and open-source ecosystem partnership models
Background in identity, security, or integration infrastructure
Familiarity with marketplace selling mechanics (AWS Marketplace Private Offers, CPPO, MCPP)

Responsibilities

Own and execute Arcade's partner strategy end-to-end, starting as a hands-on IC with full accountability for partner-sourced pipeline and revenue
Deepen and operationalize existing relationships with AWS, Azure, LangChain, MongoDB, Redis, and other strategic partners
Build co-sell and co-market motions with cloud providers, including marketplace listings (AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace) and joint go-to-market plays
Develop joint solution architectures and reference deployments with technology partners that accelerate enterprise adoption
Drive partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline by enabling partner sales teams to identify and refer Arcade opportunities
Create and manage a partner enablement program - training materials, solution briefs, and technical content that make it easy for partners to sell with us
Identify, evaluate, and recruit new strategic partners across the AI infrastructure and enterprise software ecosystem
Collaborate with Sales, Product, and Marketing to align partner initiatives with company revenue goals and product roadmap
Represent Arcade at partner events, industry conferences, and executive briefings
Track and report on partner program KPIs - pipeline contribution, revenue influence, partner engagement, and marketplace traction
As the program proves out, hire and lead a partnerships team to scale what you've built