Strategic Partnerships Lead - Ecosystem & Channel

Applied Compute•San Francisco, CA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Strategic Partnerships Lead at Applied Compute is a hands-on role focused on building and operating partnerships across open-source model labs, human data companies, research groups, systems integrators, and consulting firms. Much of the work is greenfield: the role defines partnership models for different counterparties, proves them through initial deals, and develops them into repeatable programs. The position owns partnerships from initial conversations through signed agreements and ongoing results, including their structure, economics, and business impact. The Lead works closely with sales, research, product, and leadership teams to identify important partners and turn relationships into pipeline, capability, and revenue. The role also builds the partner operating system, measures partner-sourced and partner-influenced results, and uses those results to guide investment and future partnership priorities. The role is based in San Francisco, with work from the company's office in the Mission.

Requirements

Prior professional experience in strategic partnerships, alliances, or business development at an AI lab, data company, infrastructure company, or enterprise software company, with a record of closed partnerships that produced measurable revenue.
Experience structuring and negotiating complex commercial agreements, including licensing, co-development, data-supply, resale, and referral arrangements.
Existing relationships with partner and business development teams at open-source model labs, human data companies, or large systems integrators.
Technical depth to discuss model training, post-training data, and inference, and to work directly with researchers and engineers on joint projects.
Strong commercial judgment to identify partnerships that can move the business, decline unsuitable opportunities, and structure mutually beneficial deals.
Comfort building a partnership category from scratch amid ambiguity and without templates or precedent.

Nice To Haves

Experience building a partner or channel program from scratch at an early-stage company.
Experience working with systems integrators on enterprise AI deployments.

Responsibilities

Source, structure, and close partnerships with open-source model labs, human data companies, research groups, and other research and data counterparties.
Negotiate licensing, co-development, distribution, and data-supply arrangements.
Build and operate a partner program for systems integrators and consulting firms, including recruiting partners and enabling their teams.
Develop referral, resale, and delivery structures that enable partners to bring Applied Compute into enterprise accounts.
Identify new partnership categories and counterparties, define partnership models, and close initial deals to prove those models.
Run co-selling, co-marketing, and account-mapping activities to create qualified opportunities for the sales team; work opportunities alongside account executives.
Create agreements, enablement materials, and tracking processes to make partnerships repeatable.
Manage ongoing relationships with executive sponsors and day-to-day partner contacts.
Track partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline, revenue, and capability, and use results to guide investment and new partnership decisions.
Collaborate with sales, research, product, and leadership teams to identify and develop partnerships.