Senior Partner Development Manager, AI Ecosystem

Build, recruit and close strategic AI partnerships

Build and source the pipeline

Shape the commercial model and go to market

Build the programme and work across Salesforce

What you will bring

Nice to have

• Experience with the Salesforce ecosystem: AppExchange, ISV partner programmes or AIforce.
• Background at a hyperscaler, AI platform company or AI-native startup.
• Technical background (engineering, product management or solutions engineering) or hands-on experience building with AI agents, MCP servers or developer tools.
• Experience co-selling with the field sales teams of a hyperscaler or SaaS platform.
• Experience in conversational or voice AI, workflow automation, data providers or developer tools.
• Familiarity with the regulation shaping enterprise AI adoption, such as GDPR and EU data residency, the EU AI Act, and requirements in regulated sectors like financial services.

Responsibilities

• Build a portfolio of strategic AI partners outside the US from zero, and run every deal yourself, from cold outreach to signed agreement and live integration.
• Own your opportunities in Salesforce and run commercial negotiations with high-value partners through to signature.
• Build joint value propositions with partner product and executive teams, including how their product works alongside Salesforce's own AI products.
• Assess each partner's strategic position and shape the deal to match.
• Work with the Partner Solutions team to close them.
• After signing, run each strategic partnership: joint plans, customer adoption and quarterly business reviews.
• Prospect yourself every week through cold calls, cold emails and LinkedIn outreach, as well as through venture capital firms, accelerators and founder communities.
• Recruit partners onto AIforce and AgentExchange (our marketplace for AI agents and agent actions), and onboard them through our partner programme.
• Find companies already integrating with Salesforce, including through Headless 360 and our Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, and convert those relationships into governed commercial partnerships.
• Help design new commercial models as the platform evolves
• Build co-sell motions with Salesforce's regional sales teams so partner solutions appear in customer deals, and track partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline.
• Bring partners to market: joint customer stories, AgentExchange listings and events such as Dreamforce and World Tours.
• Bring partner and customer feedback to Salesforce product teams to shape the AIforce and Headless 360 roadmap.
• Work alongside the Partner Development Manager, AI Ecosystem, and help set the recruitment approach and onboarding playbook for the wider partner portfolio.
• Work with Salesforce account executives, solution engineers, product, legal and alliances teams, and with US business development counterparts.
• Keep an accurate pipeline in Salesforce and report progress, risks and market signals to leadership.
• ISV partnership experience: 7+ years (or equivalent experience) in partnerships or business development, recruiting software companies onto a platform or marketplace, negotiating partner agreements, and running integration, listing and co-sell programmes.
• AI partnership expertise: at least 3 of those years leading partnerships with AI-native companies building agents, models or AI developer tools, at an AI lab, an AI-native ISV or platform, or a hyperscaler's AI partner team. You can name the ISV and AI partnerships you closed.
• Working knowledge of how AI agents are built and connected: LLMs, agent orchestration, tool calling and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar integration standards. You can hold a credible technical conversation with a startup CTO.
• Experience structuring partner economics for AI products: consumption or usage-based pricing, marketplace revenue share, or paid access to tools and APIs.
• Experience building a partner ecosystem or programme from an early stage, not only managing established relationships.
• An existing network in the AI startup and scale-up community outside the US, including founders, product leaders, venture capital firms and accelerators.
• Comfortable with data: you build and maintain your own pipeline and partner performance reporting.
• A hands-on, self-starting approach: you prospect, run and close deals yourself, with little structure around you, across several countries and cultures.
• Executive presence: you can lead a negotiation with a founder or CEO and present a business case to senior Salesforce leaders.
• Clear written communication, including deal memos and business cases for senior leaders.