Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Partner Director seat sits at a key intersection of SaaS distribution and cloud ecosystems: the systems integrator channel on AWS. In modern enterprise SaaS, partner-led delivery often determines whether platform adoption becomes repeatable at scale, and the listing signals a role focused on turning an alliance into an operating motion across co-sell, enablement, and solution packaging.
For a SaaS career, the durable value here is learning how revenue is created indirectly through partners rather than solely through direct sales. That includes building measurable partner contribution, establishing shared pipeline mechanics, and translating product capability into implementable offerings that services organizations can take to market. Experience with marketplace workflows, attribution, and field coordination is broadly transferable across cloud-first SaaS companies that rely on ecosystems to expand reach.
This role fits professionals who prefer ambiguity with clear accountability, and who enjoy aligning stakeholders across sales, technical teams, and external partner leadership without formal authority. It will suit someone motivated by operational rigor as much as relationship depth, and interested in the craft of making partner programs work in real customer environments rather than remaining purely strategic.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
About the Team
OpenAI’s GTM Partnerships team builds a strategic, global partner ecosystem designed to accelerate customer success, support secure AI adoption, and drive growth in support of OpenAI’s mission toward AGI. We collaborate closely across sales, technical success, product, marketing, operations, and leadership teams to turn strategic partnerships into durable commercial outcomes.
Within that team, AWS is one of OpenAI’s most strategic ecosystem partners. Beyond direct alliance engagement with AWS, a critical part of our growth strategy is enabling the Systems Integrator (SI) ecosystem to build, deliver, and scale OpenAI-powered solutions on AWS infrastructure.
Success in this space requires deep collaboration across AWS-focused SI practices, field sellers, cloud architects, delivery leaders, and OpenAI GTM teams. It requires strong operating rigor, scalable co-sell execution, and the ability to turn strategic partner relationships into measurable customer outcomes and revenue growth.
About the Role
We are hiring a Partner Director, AWS SI Partnerships to lead and scale OpenAI’s relationships with AWS-focused practices within Systems Integrators (SIs). This person will serve as a field-facing partnership leader responsible for driving co-sell engagement, enabling AWS-focused SI teams, shaping joint solution and account strategies, and accelerating customer adoption through SI-led delivery motions.
This is a revenue-oriented partnerships role for a high-output operator who can translate ecosystem strategy into pipeline, partner-attached revenue, and scalable execution. The right candidate understands how AWS-focused SI organizations operate, knows how to earn mindshare across partner field and practice leadership teams, and can build repeatable motions that scale across multiple stakeholders and regions.
This role is based in NYC or SF. We use a hybrid work model of 3 days in the office per week.
In this role, you will:
Build trusted relationships with AWS practice leaders, alliance managers, cloud sales teams, architects, and delivery leadership across key SIs and consulting partners.
Own the in-market operating relationship with AWS-focused SI partners across account mapping, joint pipeline development, opportunity coordination, and executive alignment.
Drive partner enablement on OpenAI positioning, solution use cases, technical capabilities, qualification criteria, and customer engagement best practices.
Partner closely with OpenAI Sales, Technical Success, and Product teams to support strategic enterprise opportunities involving SI-led transformation initiatives and AI deployments.
Identify, shape, and accelerate qualified opportunities emerging from AWS SI partner ecosystems and joint customer accounts.
Help SI partners build repeatable OpenAI offerings, reference architectures, delivery methodologies, and go-to-market motions aligned to AWS infrastructure and services.
Drive strong co-sell execution and operational discipline across AWS ACE, Marketplace, pipeline tracking, partner attribution, and deal progression workflows.
Develop scalable sales plays, enablement materials, field communications, and executive engagement strategies that help partners operate more independently over time.
Aggregate structured feedback from SI partners, AWS stakeholders, and customers and translate insights into recommendations for product, operations, marketing, and GTM leadership teams.
Help define the engagement model, prioritization framework, and operating cadence required to scale OpenAI’s AWS SI ecosystem globally.
Collaborate cross-functionally with Partner SAs, Cloud Specialists, Product, Engineering, Partner Marketing, Partner Operations, and executive leadership to unblock deals and improve partnership execution.
Represent OpenAI with executive presence in customer, partner, and leadership conversations where commercial judgment, technical credibility, and strategic clarity matter.
Preferred Qualifications:
8+ years in partnerships, cloud alliances, ecosystem sales, business development, consulting partnerships, or related GTM roles within SaaS, cloud, AI, or platform businesses.
Significant experience working with Global Systems Integrators and consulting firms that maintain large AWS cloud practices.
Strong familiarity with AWS co-sell motions, including ACE, Marketplace, partner funding models, and partner-led sales and delivery engagement structures.
A proven track record of driving measurable revenue outcomes through strategic partnerships, not simply managing relationships.
Experience supporting complex enterprise opportunities involving cloud modernization, AI transformation, data platforms, or large-scale technical implementations.
Comfort engaging CIOs, CTOs, cloud leadership, practice heads, and senior business stakeholders in strategic and technically informed conversations.
Experience building scalable partner programs, enablement strategies, operating cadences, sales plays, and field motions in high-growth environments.
Strong technical fluency and cloud credibility, with enough depth to engage productively with cloud architects, delivery teams, and technical decision-makers.
Experience navigating highly matrixed organizations and aligning cross-functional stakeholders without formal authority.
A demonstrated ability to operate with high ownership in ambiguous, fast-moving environments where processes and playbooks are still evolving.
You might thrive in this role if you:
Are a builder. You enjoy creating structure where none exists and turning complex partnership ecosystems into repeatable, scalable motions.
Have a sales and delivery mindset. You naturally orient toward pipeline creation, customer outcomes, partner activation, and measurable business impact.
Are highly credible with partners and executives. You know how to build trust quickly, communicate clearly, and manage escalations effectively.
Operate with urgency and strong judgment. You can prioritize ruthlessly, manage multiple stakeholders, and focus deeply where partnership leverage is highest.
Enjoy technical learning. You do not need to be the deepest technical expert in the room, but you are comfortable learning quickly and translating technical concepts into business value.
Are excited by AI, cloud transformation, and ecosystem strategy, and motivated by the opportunity to help define how OpenAI scales through AWS and strategic SI partnerships.
Compensation Range: $266K - $380K USD
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.
We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.
Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.
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