Partner Development Manager, AI Ecosystem

Job description

To get the best candidate experience, please consider applying for a maximum of 3 roles within 12 months to ensure you are not duplicating efforts. Job Category Sales Job Details About Salesforce Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. Here, ambition meets action. Tech meets trust. And innovation isn’t a buzzword — it’s a way of life. The world of work as we know it is changing and we're looking for Trailblazers who are passionate about bettering business and the world through AI, driving innovation, and keeping Salesforce's core values at the heart of it all. Ready to level-up your career at the company leading workforce transformation in the agentic era? You’re in the right place! Agentforce is the future of AI, and you are the future of Salesforce. AI agents are changing how enterprise software is built and bought. A new generation of AI-native companies is building the agents, models and tools that businesses will run on, and to scale they need trusted customer data, enterprise distribution and governance. Salesforce is well placed to provide all three. Our platform holds the customer data and workflows of more than 150,000 companies. With AIforce, our platform for building AI agents, and Headless 360, which gives any AI agent secure access to Salesforce data and actions, that data can power agents whether they run inside Salesforce or on another platform. We are building the AI partner ecosystem for this next era outside the US. You will be one of the first two people on the team, working alongside our Senior Partner Development Manager, AI Ecosystem. There is no existing territory or partner book: you will build your portfolio of AI partnerships from zero, finding the AI-native companies that matter most to our customers, recruiting them, getting them live on AIforce and AgentExchange (our marketplace for AI agents and agent actions), and growing each partnership once it is signed. This is a hands-on role: you will prospect, cold call, run deals and own your opportunities yourself, and build the engine behind it, from target research and recruitment events to the onboarding process that lets us bring on many partners at once. It is a role for an ambitious, technically strong AI partner manager who wants to build an AI ecosystem from the start, with a clear path to leading larger partnerships. What you will do Build, recruit and manage AI partnerships Build a portfolio of AI-native partners outside the US from zero, and run each deal yourself, from cold outreach to signed agreement, live integration and ongoing growth. Build joint value propositions with partner product teams, including how their product works with AIforce, Headless 360 and MCP. Run your own deals: lead recruitment conversations with founders and partnership leaders, own each opportunity in Salesforce, agree the partnership and close the agreement. After signing, run each partnership: joint plans, adoption by Salesforce customers, co-marketing, customer stories and regular business reviews. Spot partners with the potential for larger commercial deals and work with the Senior Partner Development Manager and the Partner Solutions team to close them. Build and source the pipeline Map and research AI-native companies by market and category, and keep a prioritised target list based on customer demand and fit. Prospect every week through cold calls, cold emails and LinkedIn outreach, as well as warm introductions, venture capital firms, accelerators and founder communities. Work with Salesforce account executives, solution engineers and regional sales teams to find partners their customers are asking for. Identify companies already integrating with Salesforce, including through Headless 360 or our Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, and bring them into the programme. Run recruitment events and build assets Plan and run partner recruitment events, such as founder meetups, AI builder sessions, hackathons and roundtables, often co-hosted with VCs, accelerators or Salesforce teams, and represent the programme at World Tours and Dreamforce. Create the recruitment toolkit: pitch materials, one-pagers, programme FAQs, partner case studies and demo content, tailored by market and category. Onboard partners at scale Run onboarding for many partners at the same time through a repeatable playbook, from partner agreement to technical enablement, security review and AgentExchange listing. Track every partner's progress in Salesforce, find where partners stall and improve the process, using templates, automation and AI tools to keep volume high and quality consistent. Report on pipeline, partners live and partner performance, and bring partner feedback to Salesforce product teams. What you will bring 3 to 5 years (or equivalent experience) in partner management, partnerships, alliances or business development at a software, cloud or AI company, including recruiting and managing technology or ISV partners. Experience recruiting partners and closing partner agreements, and then growing those partnerships after launch. AI partnership experience: you have closed partnerships with AI-native companies building agents, models or AI developer tools, or with developer platforms, data or API-first companies, and can name the partnerships you closed. A technical background, ideally in AI: either experience in a technical role such as engineering, solutions engineering or technical product, or hands-on experience building with LLM APIs, AI agents or MCP servers. Working knowledge of how AI agents are built and connected: LLMs, agent orchestration, tool calling and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar integration standards. You can hold a credible technical conversation with a startup founder or CTO. Experience running many partners or accounts at once with a repeatable process, and improving that process as volume grows. Comfortable with research and data: you build your own target lists, use AI tools well and keep a clean pipeline in Salesforce or another CRM. Experience organising events or community programmes, and creating clear, persuasive partner materials. Ambition and a hands-on approach: you are comfortable prospecting and cold calling, and you want to build something new from a blank page, move fast and take on more responsibility as the ecosystem grows. Clear written and spoken communication, and comfort working across countries and cultures. Nice to have Experience with the Salesforce ecosystem: AppExchange, ISV partner programmes or AIforce. Experience at an AI-native startup, AI lab, hyperscaler AI or startup partner team, accelerator or venture capital firm. Experience building and shipping your own AI agents or integrations, including side projects. Understanding of how AI products are priced and sold, such as consumption or usage-based pricing and marketplace revenue share. Connections in the AI startup community outside the US. Awareness of the regulation shaping enterprise AI adoption, such as GDPR and EU data residency, the EU AI Act, and requirements in regulated sectors like financial services. Additional languages. Unleash Your Potential When you join Salesforce, you’ll be limitless in all areas of your life. Our benefits and resources support you to find balance and be your best , and our AI agents accelerate your impact so you can do your best . Together, we’ll bring the power of Agentforce to organizations of all sizes and deliver amazing experiences that customers love. Apply today to not only shape the future — but to redefine what’s possible — for yourself, for AI, and the world. Accommodations If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please submit a request via this Accommodations Request Form . Please note that Salesforce uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help our recruiters assess and evaluate candidates’ resumes and qualifications throughout the recruiting process. Humans will always make any candidate selection and hiring decisions. Please see our Candidate Privacy Statement for more information about how we use your personal data and your rights, including with regard to use of AI tools and opt out options. We are a recognised Disability Confident member under the UK Government Disability Confident employer scheme. We are committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role. Applicants are welcome to opt-in to the interview scheme as part of the application process. If you would like to apply under the scheme, please click the link to the Accommodations Request Form above and scroll to the UK Disability Confident Scheme section within the form. Posting Statement Salesforce is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a policy of non-discrimination with all employees and applicants for employment. What does that mean exactly? It means that at Salesforce, we believe in equality for all. And we believe we can lead the path to equality in part by creating a workplace that’s inclusive, and free from discrimination. Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal. Any employee or potential employee will be assessed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications – without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, transgender status, age, disability, veteran or marital status, political viewpoint, or other classifications protected by law. This policy applies to current and prospective employees, no matter where they are in their Salesforce employment journey. It also applies to recruiting, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, assessment of job performance, discipline, termination, and everything in between. Recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions at Salesforce are fair and based on merit. The same goes for compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, reduction in workforce, recall, training, and education.