Director, AI Ecosystem Partnerships

Job Description

Job Description

Join us as we scale our business by building on our tremendous success around the world. The massive database market is going to double over the next few years and TiDB is a global player positioned as a major disruptor with TiDB Database and Database as a Service offering. TiDB is the proven enterprise database foundation for the AI era. We help companies solve today's database problems. Cost, scale, downtime, and complexity. With a distributed SQL architecture that is already battle-tested at enterprise scale. And now we help those same companies future-proof for innovating with AI, by giving them one unified foundation for transactional state, vector context, real-time analytics, and safe agent operations. In a world where AI agents need to work on fresh data, act safely, and scale economically, TiDB is not another database add-on. It is the highway system for agentic workloads. Large and high-growth organizations in markets as varied as financial services, logistics, gaming, e-commerce and software as a service have successfully deployed and expanded their TiDB footprint on mission-critical applications. Our strong open-source community roots (40,000+ stars on GitHub), innovative products and inclusive culture draw passionate and dedicated people to our company. Learn more about TiDB careers and join our team to be at the forefront of innovation and growth.

Role Overview:

We are seeking a Director of AI Ecosystem Partnerships to own and lead TiDB's partner ecosystem strategy in the AI era. This is a senior, high-impact role focused on product and solution collaboration, not traditional co-selling, reseller, or channel management. You will build and deepen integrations with leading AI platforms, infrastructure providers, and technology companies across North America, working closely with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Sales to position TiDB as the data infrastructure backbone for agentic AI and GenAI applications.

AI Ecosystem & Partnership Strategy

• Own TiDB's AI ecosystem partnership strategy, including identification, prioritization, and development of partnerships that accelerate product innovation, customer adoption, and strategic market expansion
• Identify and cultivate strategic relationships with AI platform companies, LLM providers, cloud hyperscalers, and ISVs building in the agentic AI and GenAI space
• Drive product and solution-level integrations that embed TiDB into partner platforms and AI stacks
• Build and manage a portfolio of technology partnerships aligned to TiDB's position as the database for agentic workloads that include supporting vectors, transactions, analytics, and elastic scale in a single engine
• Develop joint value propositions and solution blueprints with partners that address real enterprise AI infrastructure challenges

Product & Solution Collaboration

• Work cross-functionally with TiDB's Product and Engineering teams to scope and execute technical integrations with partner platforms
• Identify opportunities to embed TiDB natively into AI frameworks, agent orchestration layers, RAG pipelines, and cloud-native application platforms
• Leverage TiDB's capabilities, including vector search, Graph RAG, knowledge graphs, and unified data management to design compelling joint solutions with partners
• Collaborate with partners to develop reference architectures, joint solution guides, and go-to-market assets

Go-to-Market & Ecosystem Activation

• Develop and execute co-marketing and co-innovation initiatives to drive awareness of joint TiDB partner solutions in the AI/ML and enterprise data communities
• Enable partners with technical resources, training, and tools to effectively build on and promote TiDB
• Represent TiDB at partner events, AI industry conferences, and developer communities across North America and EMEA
• Engage developer ecosystems, open-source communities, and platform adoption programs to accelerate ecosystem growth through grassroots technical adoption

Pipeline & Performance

• Track and manage partnership pipeline, integration milestones, and business impact metrics, including ecosystem-influenced pipeline, joint customer opportunities, product adoption, and strategic market positioning
• Provide regular updates to leadership on partnership progress, ecosystem health, and strategic opportunities
• Continuously assess the competitive landscape and identify new whitespace opportunities for TiDB in the AI ecosystem

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, or a related field; technical background a strong plus
• 8+ years in technology partnerships, business development, or solutions alliances, with a track record of building ecosystem functions in AI, cloud, or data infrastructure
• Deep understanding of the AI/ML ecosystem, including LLM platforms, agentic AI frameworks, vector databases, RAG architectures, and cloud-native infrastructure
• Proven experience driving product-level or solution-level integrations, with ownership of ecosystem strategy that delivers measurable business outcomes
• Ability to engage both technically and commercially with engineers, product managers, and C-suite stakeholders
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills bridging BD with Product, Engineering, and Marketing
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills; able to articulate complex technical value propositions to diverse audiences
• Experience with distributed databases, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), AI infrastructure, developer ecosystems, or open-source communities is a strong plus

The annual anticipated OTE range for U.S. candidates for this role is USD $165,000 to $225,000. Four zones are applied with different levels of the pay range. More details of the Geo Differential Pay Policy will be discussed during the HR conversation. The actual individual base pay will depend on various factors such as the complexity and responsibility of the role, work locations, job levels, and relevant experience and skills. This role is also eligible to participate in TiDB's Bonus and Equity Plan, as well as our Sales Compensation Plan if it is a sales role. In order to comply with local legislation and provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base salary ranges on all US job postings regardless of desired hiring location. Please note that actual salaries may vary and fall outside of this range depending on factors such as a candidate's qualifications, geographic location, skills, experience, and competencies. Other benefits include health insurance, flexible vacation time, paid holidays, and parental leave. Salaries for candidates outside the U.S. will vary based on local compensation structures.

We encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply. Come advance with us! In keeping with our values, no employee or applicant will face discrimination/harassment based on: race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, age, gender, marital domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, or veteran status. TiDB also strives to prevent other, subtler forms of inappropriate behavior (e.g., stereotyping) from ever gaining a foothold in our organization. Whether blatant or hidden, barriers to success have no place at TiDB.