Director, Strategic Infrastructure Partnerships

Director, Strategic Infrastructure Partnerships NorthMark Compute & Cloud (NMC²)is backed by dedicated leadership and investment, with a clear mission as it operates at the bleeding edge of technology. Its goal is to scale and enhance the high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud infrastructure that supports its clients' research, production, and delivery, enabling breakthroughs that shape the industries of tomorrow. Its engineers build critical infrastructure to eliminate friction in scientific research, simulations, analysis, and decision-making, accelerating discovery and driving faster innovation. The Position We are seeking a Director, Strategic Infrastructure Partnerships, to serve as the company's dedicated lead for managing and growing our ecosystem of strategic infrastructure partners. As an HPC infrastructure company, our vendor and partner relationships are a crucial input to our competitive positioning. This new mandate is being established to bring focus, structure, and long-term vision to a function that has grown in complexity alongside the business. Today, this function is distributed across multiple teams resulting in fragmented ownership, inconsistent strategy, and an increasing burden on senior leadership. This addition to our team will centralize that ownership. The Director will serve as the primary business side counterpart to the company's commercial, technical, and operational executives, acting as a single point of accountability for the partnership roadmap. They will translate business objectives into partner strategy, manage the health of key relationships, and lead joint go‑to‑market efforts that extend our reach in the market. Responsibilities: Strategic Partnership Development Build and manage strategic partnerships with hardware OEMs, GPU suppliers, data center providers, independent software vendors (ISVs), and channel partners to support infrastructure growth. Identify, evaluate, and prioritize new vendor and partner relationships aligned to the company's cloud infrastructure, AI compute, and networking roadmap. Serve as the primary business-side owner of the HPC partnership roadmap, ensuring visibility and alignment across the organization. Track industry trends across cloud, AI infrastructure, networking, and GPU ecosystems to proactively surface partnership opportunities. Relationship Management & Executive Alignment Act as the primary point of contact for strategic vendor relationships, including executive alignment, escalation handling, and performance stewardship. Serve as the business counterpart to the Head of Infrastructure, streamlining information flow and reducing organizational navigation burden for technical leadership. Coordinate partner enablement programs, certifications, and technical training initiatives in support of internal teams. Commercial & Contractual Oversight Lead negotiation of commercial agreements, pricing structures, rebates, and service-level commitments in close partnership with NMS Procurement. Monitor vendor performance metrics, KPIs, delivery timelines, and contractual compliance; **escalate** issues as required. Support cost optimization by identifying vendor efficiencies, consolidation opportunities, and strategic sourcing improvements. Work with legal and compliance to review contracts, risk assessments, and regulatory requirements. Cross-Functional Collaboration & Planning Collaborate with procurement, product, engineering, finance, and sales to ensure vendor capabilities are aligned to business objectives. Manage strategic supplier forecasting, capacity planning, and inventory coordination for cloud infrastructure deployments. Support data center expansion initiatives by coordinating with colocation, networking, and infrastructure vendors. Go-to-Market & Ecosystem Drive joint go-to-market initiatives with partners including co-selling opportunities, marketing campaigns, and solution integrations. Conduct market analysis and competitive research on emerging technologies to identify and size new partnership opportunities. Contribute to long-term ecosystem development strategy to strengthen the company's position in the AI infrastructure market. Requirements: 8–12+ years of experience in business development, strategic partnerships, or vendor management in technology infrastructure, cloud, or HPC environments. Demonstrated track record of building and scaling strategic vendor ecosystems — ideally across hardware OEMs, GPU suppliers, or data center providers. Bachelor's degree required; MBA or relevant advanced degree preferred. Experience negotiating complex commercial agreements with technology vendors at an enterprise level. Prior exposure to AI/ML compute infrastructure, colocation, or high-performance networking is strongly preferred. Experience working cross-functionally with procurement, engineering, product, and finance teams. Strategic thinker with the ability to connect partner activity to long-term business outcomes. Strong commercial acumen — comfortable with pricing structures, rebate models, SLA frameworks, and capacity forecasting. Excellent stakeholder management skills; able to operate effectively at both executive and operational levels. Analytically rigorous — able to evaluate vendor performance data, market trends, and build/buy/partner trade-offs. Clear, concise communicator with the ability to synthesize complex vendor landscapes for executive audiences. Comfortable operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment where structure must often be created rather than inherited. #J-18808-Ljbffr NMC2