Strategic Partner Manager (Ecosystem & Frontier Alliances)

Job description

STRATEGIC PARTNER MANAGER (ECOSYSTEM & FRONTIER ALLIANCES) London / New York (Hybrid) Wordsmith Wordsmith is building the legal operations platform for in-house teams, and we are growing fast. We believe in-house legal is becoming one of the most important functions in the AI era. Every business is moving faster, but legal work is still too often scattered across inboxes, chats, documents, and disconnected systems. Wordsmith brings that work into one system. Requests come in from across the business, AI agents handle the routine, lawyers stay in control where judgment matters, and every step is captured as work happens. We are built for in-house legal, not law firms. Our goal is to help legal teams move faster, reduce unnecessary external counsel spend, and become a function the business can run with. More than 500 companies, including Financial Times, Safelite, Trip.com, Canva, Starling, and Sage, use Wordsmith. Backed by $100M from Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Highland Europe, and others, we are building one of the defining companies in legal AI. The Role Our product sits on the absolute frontier of AI. We work hand-in-hand with the foundation labs building that frontier - Anthropic and Microsoft. As they double down on ecosystems like Claude for Legal and Microsoft 365, our relationships with their teams directly dictate how fast we ship, how we scale product adoption, and how we win the market. This role exists to own the day-to-day execution, strategic alignment, and GTM activation of these critical flagship relationships. You will act as the high-leverage interface connecting Wordsmith with our partner organisations, sitting at the intersection of Product, Engineering, and Marketing. This isn't a traditional, reseller-focused BD seat. It is a sophisticated hybrid role requiring deep product empathy and sharp GTM execution. Your mission is to push deep product adoption, secure early access to frontier models, and co-ship the joint marketing moments that make Wordsmith the definitive legal application on top of their tech stacks. What You'll Do Product Collaboration & Deep Adoption - Bridge the Product Teams: Act as the primary interface between Wordsmith’s product/engineering org and our partners' applied AI, product, and developer-relations teams. - Drive Native Ecosystem Integration: Ensure Wordsmith is deeply embedded into our partners’ core surfaces (e.g., Anthropic’s MCP connector ecosystem, Claude for Legal, and Microsoft Copilot) so customers experience a seamless application stack. - Secure the Frontier Roadmap: Track partner release schedules to unlock early model previews, platform betas, and co-build opportunities for our engineering team. - Manage Technical Inbound: Own incoming partner opportunities (betas, credits, co-builds) and strategically route them internally to keep our platform ahead of the curve. Co-Marketing & Ecosystem Growth - Ship High-Impact Launches: Partner with our marketing team and partners to execute joint case studies, technical blog posts, and major partner ecosystem feature launches. - Insert Wordsmith into the AI Narrative: Keep Wordsmith top-of-mind with partner marketing teams so we are featured unprompted in their customer reels, ecosystem showcases, and keynotes. - Convert Events to Pipeline: Project-manage our presence at a high-leverage joint event calendar (e.g., Anthropic Summits, Microsoft Build/Ignite), turning hallway conversations into product feedback and sales pipeline. Relationship Management & Governance - Maintain Relationship Cadence: Run a crisp operational cadence with partner contacts while helping establish senior-to-senior touchpoints that our executive team can rely on. - Map the Ecosystem: Build and maintain an active map of stakeholders across our partners—from applied AI engineering leads to product marketing executives. What We’re Looking For Essential - 4–8+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, or product marketing/management with strong external instincts. - Highly credible in a product conversation: You don’t need to write code, but you can hold your own with an applied AI team, read a model card, and understand what makes a brilliant native integration. - Proven track record of managing complex, high-stakes external relationships with cloud, platform, or enterprise tech giants. - Strong understanding of GTM mechanics: You've shipped joint campaigns and product launches end-to-end, and you care deeply about positioning and messaging, not just getting a logo placement. - A world-class operator: Highly organised, with the ability to run trackers, close the loop, and handle executive escalations with poise and absolute clarity. - Deep curiosity about AI: You use the tools daily, have an active point of view on LLMs, and are excited to build the definitive AI layer for the legal industry. Valued - Existing relationships inside Anthropic, Microsoft, or the broader LLM/cloud ecosystem. - Experience as an early partnerships or product hire at a fast-growing, early-stage startup. - Background working within legal tech, complex enterprise software, or regulated industries. Why This Role Matters - You will be managing our most critical external relationships, directly influencing Wordsmith's roadmap, feature development, and competitive advantage. - You will have the autonomy to own and maximize our positioning within the world's leading AI ecosystems—this is a high-visibility, high-ownership role at a company moving fast. - You will work with a sharp, motivated team that operates with intensity and takes genuine ownership of outcomes. What You Can Expect - The opportunity to be at the absolute forefront of how the world's foundational AI labs are thinking about vertical enterprise applications. - The chance to collaborate deeply with product, engineering, and GTM in a high-growth environment where you can learn and contribute meaningfully. - Competitive compensation, benefits, and the opportunity to make a genuine impact on the legal industry. How We Work We’re an in-office team. We work together because it helps us collaborate closely across product, engineering, and GTM teams. You should expect to be in the office as your default. This is a high ownership role. You’ll be trusted to run projects, work directly with tech partners, and drive outcomes without heavy oversight.