Strategic Partnerships Lead

About the Role

The Strategic Partnerships Lead will manage and grow Factory's most critical partner relationships across AI Strategics (e.g., Nvidia, Anthropic), Clouds, and key platform partners. This role involves executing a comprehensive partnerships strategy that drives meaningful impact for both Factory and its partners. Given the breadth of these relationships - spanning product, engineering, marketing, sales, finance, and legal - success requires a cross-functional approach with frequent executive visibility.

The ideal candidate is a strategic thinker with a proven background in partner management, excellent analytical and data-driven decision-making skills, strong relationship management abilities, and the executive presence to engage at the C-suite level. You should have a deep understanding of how to build and scale product-centric partnerships across enterprise markets during hyper growth.

What you will do and achieve

• Manage and develop a portfolio of strategic partners aligned with Factory's objectives and long-term vision.
• Own the partnership roadmap with clear milestones, timelines, and success metrics (e.g., platform adoption, revenue growth, joint product launches).
• Prove out first-of-a-kind partnerships, then hand off repeatable motions to the Partner Manager to scale.
• Continuously analyze the market landscape to identify opportunities for expanding existing partnerships and driving new initiatives.
• Take full ownership of revenue, growth, and performance targets related to strategic partnerships.
• Drive day-to-day partnership strategy and execution across priority partners, coordinating with product, engineering, sales, finance, legal, and marketing to deliver outcomes.
• Execute partnership deals from partner evaluation through launch, expansion, and renewal, including integrations and commercial terms.

Partner Relationship Management

• Act as the primary point of contact for key technology and platform partners, building strong, long-term relationships that drive mutual success.
• Lead partner communications, including quarterly business reviews, planning sessions, and executive updates.
• Analyze partnership performance using data and insights to optimize outcomes and identify opportunities for expansion.
• Negotiate, renew, and scale partnership agreements to maximize value for both Factory and the partner.
• Serve as the internal advocate for partners, aligning product and cross-functional teams to partner goals and driving accountability against agreed success metrics.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Develop a deep understanding of Factory's products, ecosystem, and strategic priorities.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams to ensure seamless integration of partner technologies and accelerated market adoption.
• Work with Legal and Finance to oversee contracts, compliance, and renewals.
• Partner with Marketing and Communications teams to drive joint go-to-market initiatives, co-marketing campaigns, and product launches.

Operational Excellence

• Track, analyze, and report on partnership performance metrics, providing actionable insights to leadership.
• Maintain accurate documentation of agreements, performance data, and key communications.
• Drive internal team updates (e.g., weekly updates, executive briefs, upcoming launches).
• Identify and proactively resolve operational challenges that could impact partner success.
• Ensure all partnerships align with company strategy and deliver measurable value.

Qualifications

• 6-8+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, or strategic alliances within the technology sector - ideally at companies where partnerships were critical during hyper growth.
• Demonstrated success in managing and growing complex, high-impact partnerships across AI, cloud, or enterprise platform ecosystems.
• Experience in high-growth startup or fast-paced technology environments.
• Strong cross-functional operating skills with experience working alongside product, engineering, legal, finance, and sales teams to execute complex initiatives.
• Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to leverage data to drive strategic decisions.
• Outstanding communication, negotiation, and executive relationship-building skills with the ability to engage at the C-suite level.
• Strong bias for action and the ability to operate both independently and as part of cross-functional teams.
• Self-directed and adaptable, comfortable operating in fast-moving environments with evolving priorities.
• Consulting, investment banking, MBA, product-to-partnerships transitions, chief of staff, or government affairs backgrounds are a plus. Experience at companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Ramp, or similar hypergrowth organizations is a plus.