Partner Director

Cognition; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI lab is seeking a Partner Director to build its partner ecosystem from the ground up. The role involves sourcing and activating partners that drive revenue for the platform. Candidates must have 3+ years of business development experience and demonstrate the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment. This position offers a chance to create strategic partnerships and significantly impact the company's growth trajectory.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in partnerships, channel, business development, sales, or strategic alliances.
• Strong understanding of the partner landscape and business development.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-intensity environment.

Responsibilities

• Build Cognition’s partner ecosystem from scratch.
• Develop and execute partner strategy across key segments.
• Own the full partner lifecycle from sourcing to revenue generation.
• Create joint go-to-market strategies and business plans.
• Work closely with Cognition’s sales team to drive opportunities.
• Focus on results by generating pipeline and revenue.

Skills

Partnership development

Sales experience

Understanding of partner landscape

Strong negotiation skills

Business development

Job description

We are an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents.

We're the makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer, and Windsurf, the AI-native IDE. Together, they represent our vision for collaborative AI teammates that enable engineers to focus on more interesting problems and empower teams to strive for more ambitious goals.

Our team is small and talent-dense. Among our founding team, we have world-class competitive programmers, former founders, and leaders from companies at the cutting edge of AI including Scale AI, Palantir, Cursor, Waymo, Tesla, Lunchclub, Modal, Google DeepMind, and Nuro.

Building Devin and Windsurf is just the first step—our hardest challenges still lie ahead. If you’re excited to solve some of the world’s biggest problems and build AI that can reason on real-world tasks, apply to join us.

About the Role

As a Partner Director, you will be responsible for building Cognition’s partner ecosystem from the ground up — sourcing, recruiting, enabling, and activating partners that drive meaningful revenue for Cognition’s platform..

You will create partnerships from a standing start and turn them into partner‑initiated business. This is not a maintenance role. You will define the strategy, build the program, support deals, and help close new business alongside our partners.

You’ll work closely with engineering, product, sales, and marketing to build a high‑leverage partner engine that accelerates Cognition’s growth and expands Devin’s reach into the world’s most ambitious technology organizations.

Successful candidates will have 3+ years of experience in partnerships, channel, business development, sales, or strategic alliances, a strong understanding of the partner landscape, and the drive and grit required to build a revenue channel from zero in a fast‑paced, high‑intensity environment.

3-5 bullet points on scope of role

• Build Cognition’s partner ecosystem from scratch, identifying and recruiting high‑impact strategic, consulting, system integrators, and value added resellers.
• Develop and execute partner strategy across key segments (SIs, consultancies, and VARs)
• Own the full partner lifecycle — sourcing, vetting, onboarding, enablement, business planning, activation, and revenue generation
• Create joint go‑to‑market strategies and business plans with partners that drive pipeline and closed revenue
• Navigate complex partner organizations, aligning executives, practice leaders, and delivery teams
• Work closely with Cognition’s sales team to accelerate partner‑influenced and partner‑sourced opportunities
• Focus on results — generate pipeline, drive partner‑initiated revenue, and build a scalable partner engine for Cognition