Partner Development Lead - Service Partners

Emergent Labs•San Francisco, CA

22h

About The Position

Emergent is seeking a senior individual contributor to establish and scale a repeatable playbook for recruiting, enabling, and driving joint customer acquisition with service partners globally. Currently, digital marketing agencies, IT solution providers, and dev shops engage with Emergent through ad hoc relationships. This role will transform these interactions into a structured program, starting with developing a comprehensive program for the first regional agency partnership and then expanding this model to recruit similar partners across different markets and countries. The position reports to the Head of Partnerships and offers significant autonomy in shaping the partner function.

Requirements

5+ years of experience in partnerships, channel, alliances, or business development, with a focus on agencies, systems integrators, dev shops, or a similar service-partner ecosystem.
Proven track record of transforming a single pilot relationship into a scalable, repeatable program by developing the operational playbook.
Comfort operating in an ambiguous, fast-paced startup environment where the function is still under development.
Self-motivated and professionally persistent, with a proactive approach to identifying and resolving internal and external barriers.
Strong commercial and negotiation skills, with experience in structuring partner agreements and revenue-share models.
Excellent relationship-building abilities, capable of working effectively across diverse cultures, time zones, and company sizes.
A focus on joint customer success as the primary driver for all decisions, rather than solely partner count or deal volume.

Nice To Haves

Experience with digital marketing, SEO/SEM, or web/app development agencies as partners or customers.
Experience building or scaling a channel program that includes a hyperscaler co-sell motion (e.g., AWS ISV Accelerate or APN).
Multilingual skills or experience managing international partners.

Responsibilities

Transform the initial pilot agency partnership into a documented, repeatable playbook, defining partner criteria, onboarding processes, enablement strategies, budget models, and success metrics.
Establish and manage Emergent's formal partner program for digital marketing agencies, IT solution providers, and dev shops, including partner tiering, a vetted partner directory, certification and enablement content, and co-sell strategies.
Manage end-to-end relationships with service partners, encompassing prospecting, recruitment, onboarding, enablement, activation, and ongoing account management, including conducting regular business reviews.
Define and achieve joint outcomes, prioritizing new customer acquisition sourced or influenced by partners, speed to deployed production applications, and customer retention and expansion.
Negotiate and finalize commercial terms and partner agreements, including revenue share, co-marketing investment, and marketing development funds, in collaboration with legal and finance departments.
Collaborate with marketing, product, and sales teams to ensure seamless conversion of partner-sourced leads into deployed, successful customers.
Act as the internal advocate for service partners, developing the necessary internal processes, tooling, and reporting to enable program scalability beyond individual relationship management.