Director of Partnerships

Operant AI is seeking a results-oriented Director of Partnerships to join the Operant AI team as a foundational member of the GTM team, focused on strategic partnerships. Operant is enjoying a period of rapid growth, with huge opportunities for a partnership leader who thrives off of urgency and meeting critical customer needs in a fast-paced startup environment.

As the right candidate to join us on this roller-coaster, you are a hands-on do-er who thrives off of the energy of closing partnership deals, driving revenue through co-selling, re-selling, and ecosystem partners, while building foundations for rapid scaling in a high-growth startup environment. You are a seasoned GTM expert with deep industry and partnership knowledge spanning tech, cloud providers, resellers, and ecosystem partnerships, able to cultivate the right relationships with the right people across customer orgs to drive successful closing and account user growth. Your technical prowess at understanding the urgent security challenges and available market solutions at the cutting edge of cloud and AI, especially AI and MCP, as well as related categories such as CNAPP, CADR, K8s Security and API threat protection, should enable you to comfortably discuss Operant's product details, features, and differentiation with key technical members of partner teams, including sales executives, product leaders, solutions architects, and account executives, building trust and brand equity as you represent the company in growing our partner relationships through successful joint initiatives and signed end-customer contracts. You should deeply understand the cloud and AI cybersecurity competitive landscape (both incumbents and rising startups), the shifting dynamics among major cloud providers and AI ecosystem players (including MCP server providers and AI IDEs) and should be passionate about Operant's mission to secure the modern world.

We're in business to secure the modern world. Operant's unique technology solves several of the biggest problems in modern cybersecurity - including the most urgent and critical use cases in securing Agentic AI, MCP, and Gen AI applications - all with an implementation that is so easy that many customers don't believe that it could possibly be true until they see it in action. As a leader in the AI and MCP security space, we have already been named as a vendor in four Gartner reports in the last year, including the iconic Market Guide for AI Trust, Risk, and Security Management (AI TRiSM), How to Secure Custom-Built Agents, Gartner's market guide for API Protection and Kubernetes Runtime Security as well as Forrester's Zero Trust landscape.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Drive Partner Growth:
   • Expand strategic partnerships leading to scaled revenue growth by working closely with partners, engineering and partner success teams throughout the entire partner deal cycle.
   • Identify key partners and establish strong relationships with decision-makers, being able to build trust with both deeply technical SEs and commercially focused leaders to close deals with a product that provides significant joint value.
   • Develop and manage partner pipelines, forecasts, and budgets.
2. Collaborate Cross-Functionally:
   • Work closely with marketing, sales, product, and engineering teams to align partnership efforts with overall company objectives.
   • Provide insights and feedback to engineering, product and marketing teams to enhance product offerings and messaging.
   • Represent the brand at key live events including conferences, customer dinners, and industry talks.
3. Analyze and Report on Partnership Performance:
   • Track and analyze partnership metrics and performance data.
   • Prepare and present regular partnership reports to the executive team.
   • Utilize data-driven insights to continuously improve partnership strategies and processes.
4. Build and Lead a High-Performing Partnership Team:
   • Recruit, train, and mentor a "best-in-class" team of sales engineers and account executives, without relying on BDRs to manage your communication pipeline.
   • Set clear performance goals, provide regular feedback, and drive accountability.
   • Foster a positive, collaborative, respectful and results-oriented sales culture.
5. Own Next-Level Partnership Strategy:
   • Develop and implement a comprehensive partnership strategy across co-sellers, resellers, and ecosystem partners that doesn't rely on cold emails and armies of BDRs.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of experience with growing responsibility in related roles with a strong track record of success in a startup environment.
• Cybersecurity experience required.
• Proven track record of success in a startup partnership leadership role, in enterprise cybersecurity, especially cloud, Kubernetes or AI.
• Personal experience driving large partnership deals, including negotiation commercial specs, with a proven track record of building and driving relationships, as well as driving partnership process paperwork and drudgery in a rapidly moving, accelerated time frame.
• Exceptionally good technical prowess in cloud, AI and Kubernetes with a proven track record of selling at the cutting edge of technology, including the ability to self-teach technical concepts at a level of detail required to hold authority and build trust with highly technical buyers, as well as quick absorption of new technical principles and shifting competitors in a rapidly changing market segment.
• Comfort with and passion for cross-functional relationship building across multiple members of partner teams, internal stakeholders, customers and vendors.
• Deep respect for the customer's and partner's intelligence, their real-world needs, and our product's ability to genuinely make customers' and partners' lives easier and their stacks more secure.
• Exceptional written and spoken communication skills with impeccable social judgment and the ability to customize your communications to the situation while remaining true to the product and brand messaging.
• Experience working in a fast-paced startup environment
• Open, curious and receptive to new ideas and ways of doing things
• Willing to mentor new members of the team as the company grows
• Bachelor's degree with demonstrated comfort with both human behavior and technical topics either through coursework, extension classes or prior work experience.

Work Hours & Location:

• SF Bay Area location for hybrid set-up in our Jackson Square office is strongly preferred.
• Remote candidates from the US and Canada will be considered.
• This position will require you to be available during core PST business hours (9am-5pm) and to be highly responsive on customer threads regardless of business hours. You will be required to adjust schedules based on customer and business needs including business travel, conferences, client meeting/call schedules, and team off-sites.

What You Can Expect From Us:

Operant is an equal opportunity workplace where you will find an open and supportive environment to share your thoughts and ideas, while enabling you to springboard your career in a high-growth, high-energy startup.

Benefits:

• Medical, dental and vision insurance
• Life insurance
• 401k
• Paid holidays
• Generous PTO
• Stock options