Partner Business Development Manager

Partner Business Development Manager

The Sage Group's client, an AI safety and research company working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems — with a mission to ensure AI is safe and beneficial for both customers and society — is seeking a Partner Business Development Manager. Duration: 12 months with potential extension and contract to hire. Compensation: $110/hour. Location: Hybrid twice a week, San Francisco CA. Portfolio / Work Samples required with application.

Client's partner ecosystem is growing, and with it a steady volume of partner-facing operational work: recruiting systems integrators (SIs), onboarding and activating new partners, following up on deal registrations, and keeping our partner data clean. We're hiring a Partner BDR to keep the partner funnel moving and the operations engine running. This is a Claude-first role by design: Claude handles the volume — drafting outreach, summarizing threads, triaging deal registrations, prepping data — and you bring the judgment, the partner relationships, and the nuanced conversations. You'll operate at 2–3x by running Claude-powered workflows and help refine and document those workflows as you go.

What you'll do:

• Run partner outreach and follow up — review and send Claude-drafted outbound and follow-up sequences to SIs, making the calls on tone, timing, and when to escalate.
• Own nuanced SI conversations — answer questions about the partner program, tiers, and incentives, and nudge partners through onboarding and activation.
• Keep the funnel clean and moving — triage deal registrations, maintain Salesforce hygiene, and prep data, working from Claude-generated checklists and digests.
• Be the point of continuity for a set of named partner contacts, and hand off to the right internal owner when a conversation turns strategic.
• Help build the playbook — give feedback on what Claude should take on next, and document workflows as they stabilize so the institutional knowledge lives in the playbook, not just in your head.

This role does not involve end-customer contact, deal ownership, or customer correspondence. The focus is partner operations and SI dialogue.

What we're looking for:

• 5+ years BDR/SDR or partner/channel experience, ideally working with systems integrators, resellers, or other partners rather than only end-customer prospecting, for a big name brand with high volume.
• Are comfortable running AI-powered workflows — you like using tools like Claude to move faster, and you can tell when to trust the draft and when to rewrite it.
• Communicate clearly and warmly in writing, and can adjust tone for different partner audiences.
• Are organized and reliable with CRM and pipeline hygiene (Salesforce or similar), and sweat the data details.
• Use good judgment on escalations and exceptions, and know when to pull in a human owner.
• Can ramp quickly and work independently in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment.
• They do not have a BDR function so open to someone that can streamline a process, ideally partner or channel experience as well as any operations experience, customer facing experience.
• Strong candidates may also:
• Have worked inside a partner or channel program (deal registration, partner tiers, incentives, onboarding).
• Have hands-on experience with Salesforce specifically.
• Have helped document or improve a repeatable operational process or playbook.