Strategic Partnerships Lead - Cloud

Applied Compute•San Francisco, CA

17h•Onsite

About The Position

The Strategic Partnerships Lead - Cloud will build and operate Applied Compute’s partner ecosystem, with a focus on partnerships with cloud providers and other large counterparties. The role owns partnerships from initial discussions through agreement execution and ongoing performance, including their structure, economics, and business impact. The person will work with sales, product, and leadership teams to identify valuable partners and turn relationships into pipeline, capacity, and revenue as the company grows. The role is based in Applied Compute’s Mission office in San Francisco.

Requirements

Professional experience in strategic partnerships, alliances, or business development at an AI lab, cloud provider, infrastructure company, or enterprise software company, with a track record of closed partnerships producing measurable revenue.
Experience structuring and negotiating complex commercial agreements, including co-sell, resale, referral, marketplace, and capacity arrangements.
Existing relationships with partner, alliances, and business development teams at hyperscalers.
Technical depth to engage confidently in discussions about model training, inference, and infrastructure, and to work directly with engineers on integrations.
Strong commercial judgment to identify partnerships that will move the business, decline others, and structure mutually beneficial deals.

Nice To Haves

Experience building a partner or channel program from scratch at an early-stage company.
Familiarity with hyperscaler marketplace programs, co-sell incentives, and partner-funded programs.
Experience working with systems integrators on enterprise AI deployments.

Responsibilities

Source, structure, and close partnerships with hyperscalers and other large strategic counterparties.
Negotiate commercial terms, co-sell motions, marketplace listings, and capacity arrangements.
Run co-selling, co-marketing, and account-mapping activities to convert partner relationships into qualified opportunities, working alongside account executives.
Build agreements, enablement materials, and tracking systems to make partnerships repeatable as the ecosystem grows.
Manage relationships with executive sponsors and day-to-day counterparts at partner organizations.
Measure partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline, revenue, and capacity, and use results to guide investment and future partnership decisions.