Strategic Partnerships Lead - Ecosystem & Channel

As the Strategic Partnerships Lead - Ecosystem & Channel at Applied Compute, you’ll build the partnerships that don’t yet have a playbook. This is a hands-on role dedicated to partnerships. You’ll spend your time sourcing, structuring, negotiating, and operating partnerships with open-source model labs, human data companies, research groups, and the systems integrators and consulting firms that carry our work into enterprises.

Much of this ground is greenfield: you’ll define what a partnership with Applied Compute looks like for each kind of counterparty, prove it with a first deal, and turn it into a program. You’ll own each partnership from first conversation through signed agreement and ongoing results, with responsibility for its structure, economics, and business impact.

You’ll work closely with our sales, research, product, and leadership teams to decide which partners matter, bring them in, and turn each relationship into pipeline, capability, and revenue as the company grows.

What you’ll do

• Build model and data partnerships. Source, structure, and close partnerships with open-source model labs, human data companies, and other research and data counterparties. Negotiate the licensing, co-development, distribution, and data-supply arrangements that give Applied Compute and our customers the models, data, and access we need.

• Build the channel. Stand up and run our partner program for systems integrators and consulting firms. Recruit the right firms, enable their teams via our platform and services, and build the referral, resale, and delivery structures that let partners bring us into their enterprise accounts.

• Open new partnership categories. Identify counterparties we haven’t worked with before, from evaluation and benchmark providers to domain-expert networks and industry consortia. Define what a partnership with Applied Compute looks like for each, and close the first deal that proves the model.

• Turn partnerships into pipeline. Run the co-selling, co-marketing, and account-mapping motions that convert partner relationships into qualified opportunities for our sales team, and work those opportunities alongside our account executives.

• Own the partner operating system. Build the agreements, enablement materials, and tracking that make partnerships repeatable as the ecosystem grows. Manage ongoing relationships with executive sponsors and day-to-day counterparts at each partner.

• Measure and improve results. Instrument partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline, revenue, and capability. Use those results to decide where to invest more, where to pull back, and which new partnerships to pursue.

What we’re looking for

• Prior professional experience in strategic partnerships, alliances, or business development at an AI lab, data company, infrastructure company, or enterprise software company, with a track 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.

• Enough technical depth to hold your own in conversations about model training, post-training data, and inference, and to work directly with researchers and engineers on joint projects.

• Strong commercial judgment: you can tell which partnerships will move the business, say no to the rest, and structure deals that work for both sides.

• Comfort with ambiguity: you can build a partnership category from nothing, with no template to follow and no precedent to point to.

Nice to have

• Experience building a partner or channel program from scratch at an early-stage company.

• Experience working with systems integrators on enterprise AI deployments.

Benefits & Logistics

This role is based in San Francisco. We work from our office in the Mission. We offer:

• Competitive compensation and equity

• 100% employer-paid health insurance coverage for you and your family

• Unlimited PTO

• Paid parental leave

• Daily lunches and dinners

• Transportation and relocation support

• 5% 401(k) match

We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the process with you. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. As set forth in Applied Compute’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.