Business Development Director, Generalist (Contractor)

Accountabilities: Develop channel and ecosystem strategy: Own the global partnership strategy across cloud service providers, trust and identity platforms, global systems integrators, and other strategic technology and distribution partners. Prioritize strategic opportunities: Identify and develop high-impact partnerships that can accelerate distribution, implementation capacity, customer adoption, and revenue growth. Lead strategic relationships: Build executive-level relationships, establish joint business plans, and negotiate agreements that translate partnerships into technical integrations, customer adoption, qualified pipeline, and commercial results. Design scalable commercial models: Develop partner incentives, economic models, and engagement structures that make it attractive for partners to integrate, recommend, implement, and distribute the solution. Drive partner-led go-to-market initiatives: Establish repeatable sell-with, sell-through, build-with, and integrate-with models that embed the solution into partner products, services, enterprise architectures, and AI transformation programs. Lead systems integration and customer success: Build and guide the global systems integrator strategy and team, developing implementation methodologies, reference architectures, partner enablement, and joint go-to-market programs. Ensure early customer deployments become successful reference implementations and repeatable adoption playbooks. Coordinate cross-functional execution: Align partner initiatives with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and broader go-to-market priorities, using customer and partner insights to inform the product roadmap. Represent the business externally: Engage senior partner executives and participate in relevant industry forums to strengthen market positioning and establish the solution as a foundational trust layer for AI agents. Deliver measurable first-year results: Target 10–15 strategic ecosystem partnerships, secure 5–8 active design partners, help close the first enterprise commercial agreements, and establish repeatable partner-led growth opportunities. Requirements Relevant experience: 7–10 years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, alliances, or ecosystem leadership within enterprise technology. Partnership development: Demonstrated success building and scaling partnerships across cloud services, enterprise technology, security, identity, trust, and/or global systems integration. Emerging technology commercialization: Proven ability to take new technologies and partnership models from initial concept to scalable adoption, including developing strategy, commercial models, and operating mechanisms. Business and technical fluency: Ability to engage credibly with product, engineering, architecture, security, and executive stakeholders and translate technical capabilities into compelling commercial propositions. Commercial and negotiation expertise: Strong judgment and experience structuring partnership economics, incentives, joint business plans, and complex strategic agreements. Ecosystem growth mindset: Ability to connect partner economics, technical integrations, and customer value to build sustainable, mutually beneficial partnerships. Leadership and communication: Exceptional executive communication, negotiation, relationship-building, and team leadership skills, with the ability to influence across organizational boundaries. Strategic and operational agility: An AI-native, execution-focused approach, comfort with ambiguity, and a commitment to measurable outcomes in a fast-moving environment. Work authorization: Must be legally authorized to work in the United States and hold all permits, licenses, and authorizations required to provide services as an independent contractor. Compliance and ethics: Must perform services in accordance with applicable anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws and relevant partner policies and training. Location: Must be based in the United States. Preferred states include Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. Benefits Contract-to-hire structure: Begin as an independent contractor, with the potential to transition to full-time employment after an initial engagement period. Contract compensation: An agreed-upon monthly retainer during the independent contractor engagement. Potential full-time salary: Anticipated annual base salary of $130,000–$150,000 upon conversion to full-time employment. Sales incentives: Eligibility for a sales incentive plan upon conversion to full-time employment. Remote flexibility: Work remotely from within the United States, subject to the stated location preferences.