Strategic Partnerships Manager

What’s Shade? Shade is scaling fast. In 18 months, we've built the combined technology of FrameIO (acquired by Adobe for $1.275B) and LucidLink ($40M ARR), layered with proprietary AI for visual search and video labeling. We process thousands of hours of video per day, powering end-to-end workflows for major customers across post-production, creative agencies, sports, and internal media teams—including Clay, Related, Grüns, HelloFresh, and Webflow. We're growing 150% QoQ with 120% NRR. Backed by Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Contrary, and Bling. What's next We're building the platform creative teams actually need. We're not here to generate AI slop—we're eliminating the tedious parts of creative work: waiting for downloads, manually tagging files, sorting archives, license verification. Because we operate at the file system level, we're positioned as critical infrastructure for how creative teams store, access, and leverage their media. That foundation unlocks endless possibility. Takeaway We're laying the tracks as we drive the train. You’re getting in on the ground floor of the next Cursor or Figma. What we're looking for An experienced partnerships lead to join full-time and build our strategic partnerships function from the ground up, working closely with our CEO and GTM leadership. What this looks like: You've built partnerships strategy before: 5-6+ years in Business Development, Partnerships, or a related GTM function — ideally with time at a high-growth startup helping stand up a partner program where none existed yet. Cross-functional by default: you can define partnership strategy and goals, then build the alignment across product, sales, marketing, and leadership to actually execute against them — without needing a lot of hand-holding. A real deal-maker: experience leading and negotiating complex, first-of-their-kind partnerships — technical integrations, channel, or platform deals — from first conversation to signed agreement. Technical enough to be dangerous: comfortable getting into product and roadmap conversations, and credible enough to represent partner needs directly to engineering and design. Sharp with data and insight: you track partner performance, spot trends, and turn that into clear, regular updates and recommendations for leadership — not just a deck of vanity metrics. A builder, not just a maintainer: excited to define process where none exists yet. Equally comfortable running a partner business review and writing the one-pager that gets a deal prioritized internally. Represents Shade well: confident in partner meetings, negotiations, industry events, and conferences — often the face of Shade to a partner. Room to grow: as the partner program scales, there's a real opportunity to build and lead a team of partner managers under you. Perks! You are more than “shareholder value.” We build our team around personal investment and ambition, so we offer benefits like: Office snacks, free lunch, comp-ed dinners Full health insurance (w. dental & vision), 401k with % match Unlimited PTO Lifetime gym membership Commuter cards for subway/bus —> we work in-person ^^ You’ll want to work in-person! We are fun! Our office is cool! And, of course, these are in addition to salary and equity. At Shade, you are the “shareholder.” Bonus Points "You don't know what you don't know" — CEO Brandon We view team growth as an opportunity for skill capture. These aren't "mission critical," but they will put your application over the edge: Experience creating and implementing product or channel partnership strategies in enterprise SaaS Experience partnering with companies in the M&E / creative tools ecosystem (Adobe, NLEs, DAM, cloud storage) Comfortable structuring and negotiating revenue-share or reseller agreements