Director of Business Development & Partnerships

Director of Business Development & Partnerships Location: Dallas, TX Type: Direct Hire Overview We are seeking a Director of Business Development & Partnerships to lead and scale the company’s strategic infrastructure partner ecosystem. As a high-performance computing and AI infrastructure company, vendor and partner relationships are a critical driver of competitive positioning, infrastructure growth, commercial leverage, and long-term market strategy. This is a newly created leadership role designed to bring structure, ownership, and strategic focus to a partnership function that has grown increasingly complex alongside the business. Today, partner ownership is distributed across multiple teams, creating fragmented strategy, inconsistent engagement, and added burden on senior technical and commercial leadership. This role will centralize accountability and establish a clear, scalable partnership roadmap. The Director will serve as the primary business-side owner for strategic infrastructure partnerships, working closely with commercial, technical, procurement, finance, legal, product, engineering, and operational executives. This individual will translate business objectives into partner strategy, manage the health and performance of key relationships, lead commercial negotiations, and drive joint go-to-market initiatives that expand the company’s reach across the AI infrastructure and HPC ecosystem. Key Responsibilities Strategic Partnership Development Build, manage, and expand strategic partnerships with hardware OEMs, GPU suppliers, data center providers, networking vendors, independent software vendors, and channel partners. Identify, evaluate, and prioritize new partner relationships aligned with the company’s cloud infrastructure, AI compute, networking, and data center growth roadmap. Serve as the business-side owner of the HPC and AI infrastructure partnership roadmap, ensuring visibility, alignment, and accountability across the organization. Monitor industry trends across cloud, AI infrastructure, GPU ecosystems, high-performance networking, and data center infrastructure to proactively identify partnership opportunities. Develop a structured framework for evaluating partner value, strategic fit, commercial impact, scalability, and long-term business alignment. Relationship Management & Executive Alignment Serve as the primary point of contact for strategic vendor and partner relationships, including executive alignment, performance stewardship, escalations, and long-term relationship planning. Act as the business counterpart to technical infrastructure leadership, streamlining communication, decision-making, and partner engagement across the organization. Establish regular partner business reviews, executive touchpoints, roadmap discussions, and performance checkpoints. Coordinate partner enablement programs, certifications, training, and technical alignment initiatives in support of internal infrastructure, engineering, sales, and operations teams. Create structure around partner engagement to reduce organizational friction and improve visibility for senior leadership. Commercial & Contractual Oversight Lead commercial negotiations with strategic vendors, including pricing structures, rebate models, service-level commitments, capacity commitments, and partnership terms. Partner closely with procurement, legal, finance, and compliance teams on contract review, risk assessment, regulatory requirements, and vendor governance. Monitor vendor performance metrics, delivery timelines, KPIs, contractual compliance, and service-level performance. Identify opportunities for cost optimization, vendor consolidation, sourcing improvement, and increased commercial leverage. Support long-term capacity planning and infrastructure scalability through stronger vendor alignment and commercial planning. Cross-Functional Collaboration & Planning Collaborate with procurement, product, engineering, infrastructure, finance, legal, and sales teams to ensure vendor capabilities align with business objectives. Support strategic supplier forecasting, capacity planning, inventory coordination, and deployment readiness for cloud and HPC infrastructure initiatives. Partner with infrastructure and operations teams to support data center expansion, colocation strategy, networking vendor coordination, and deployment planning. Translate technical infrastructure needs into clear business requirements for vendors and partners. Provide executive-level reporting on partner health, commercial impact, risks, opportunities, and strategic priorities. Go-to-Market & Ecosystem Development Drive joint go-to-market initiatives with strategic partners, including co-selling motions, marketing campaigns, solution integrations, and ecosystem programs. Identify opportunities to expand market reach through partner-led or partner-supported commercial activity. Conduct market analysis and competitive research on emerging technologies, infrastructure trends, and ecosystem shifts. Help shape the company’s long-term ecosystem strategy to strengthen its position in the AI infrastructure and high-performance computing market. Build repeatable processes for partner evaluation, onboarding, governance, and ongoing performance management. Qualifications 8–12+ years of experience in business development, strategic partnerships, vendor management, alliances, or commercial strategy within technology infrastructure, cloud, data center, AI infrastructure, or HPC environments. Demonstrated success building, managing, and scaling strategic vendor or partner ecosystems. Experience working with hardware OEMs, GPU suppliers, data center providers, networking vendors, ISVs, or infrastructure technology partners strongly preferred. Experience negotiating complex commercial agreements with enterprise technology vendors. Strong understanding of pricing structures, rebate models, service-level agreements, capacity planning, and vendor performance management. Prior exposure to AI/ML compute infrastructure, colocation, GPU infrastructure, cloud platforms, or high-performance networking strongly preferred. Experience working cross-functionally with procurement, engineering, infrastructure, product, finance, legal, and sales teams. Strong commercial acumen with the ability to connect partner strategy to revenue growth, infrastructure scale, cost optimization, and long-term business outcomes. Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills. Ability to synthesize complex vendor landscapes, technical requirements, commercial models, and market trends into clear recommendations. Highly analytical and comfortable evaluating vendor performance data, market dynamics, sourcing options, and build/buy/partner trade-offs. Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, high-growth environment where structure, process, and ownership must be created rather than inherited. Bachelor’s degree required;MBA or relevant advanced degree preferred. Ideal Profile The ideal candidate is a commercially minded partnerships leader with deep exposure to infrastructure technology ecosystems. This person understands how to build strategic relationships that create business value, improve vendor leverage, accelerate infrastructure growth, and support long-term competitive differentiation. They should be equally comfortable negotiating with enterprise technology vendors, aligning with technical leadership, presenting to executives, and creating scalable processes for partner governance. This is a high-impact role for someone who can bring structure to ambiguity, build trusted relationships across technical and commercial teams, and help shape the company’s position in the AI infrastructure and HPC market. #J-18808-Ljbffr GTN Technical Staffing