Head of Alliances and Partnerships (REMOTE)

📋 Description

• • Own and evolve Upbound’s global alliances and partnerships strategy, translating the momentum of the 100-million-download Crossplane open-source project into repeatable, revenue-generating motions with hyperscalers, ISVs, GSIs, and AI-centric technology providers.
• • Build a prioritized partner map and multi-year roadmap that balances open-source community growth with enterprise ARR targets; define KPIs for sourced pipeline, influenced revenue, co-sell velocity, and joint consumption of Upbound’s usage-based platform.
• • Serve as the primary executive relationship owner for strategic cloud alliances (AWS, Azure, GCP), negotiating joint go-to-market plans, marketplace listings, service integrations, and field-level co-sell programs that position Upbound as the default control-plane layer for agentic infrastructure.
• • Architect and launch a tiered partner program (Technology, Solution, Global Elite) complete with enablement paths, certification tracks, MDF policies, and joint-marketing playbooks; create scalable onboarding so partners can self-serve yet still feel white-glove support.
• • Collaborate with Product and Engineering to ensure partner technical requirements—APIs, Terraform providers, policy packs, AI-agent SDKs—are reflected in quarterly roadmaps; run quarterly business reviews (QBRs) with top 10 partners to align on joint innovation bets.
• • Drive co-innovation stories that showcase Crossplane-powered control planes running AI workloads, FinOps policies, and multi-cloud governance; package these stories into repeatable sales assets, reference architectures, and joint webinars that accelerate both community and enterprise adoption.
• • Represent Upbound at KubeCon, AWS re:Invent, Google Cloud Next, Microsoft Build, and AI-infra meetups; deliver keynote-level talks that cement thought-leadership and generate high-quality partner and customer leads.
• • Work hand-in-hand with Marketing to launch joint campaigns, field events, and account-based motions; ensure every campaign has clear attribution models so ROI can be measured against CAC and LTV targets.
• • Build and mentor a lean, high-impact partner ops team (initially 1-2 analysts) responsible for deal registration, partner portal management, and pipeline reporting; automate wherever possible to keep the team ratio efficient.
• • Serve as the internal voice of the partner ecosystem—translate field feedback into pricing, packaging, and roadmap recommendations; maintain a living partner-competitive-intel dossier that Sales can reference in real time.
• • Establish legal and compliance frameworks (MSPs, OEM, resale, data-processing addenda) that allow rapid global expansion without exposing Upbound to unnecessary risk; partner with Finance to model tiered discount schedules and consumption-based rebates.
• • Champion diversity in the partner network by actively recruiting minority-owned GSIs, regional cloud providers, and AI-startup ecosystems that broaden Upbound’s global reach and cultural relevance.