Partnerships Lead — Developer Ecosystem & Growth

Kernel; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Industry-competitive salary

Above market equity

Medical + dental coverage + dependent

Senior + staff engineers team

Async work culture

Daily lunches

Unlimited PTO

401k + company match

Relocation assistance

Job summary

KERNEL is hiring a Partnerships Lead to build and grow a network of partners that brings developers and startups to KERNEL. You will own partner programs end to end, from prioritization to onboarding, launch, and measuring impact, working closely with Sales for handoffs and with Product for roadmap alignment.

You will focus on strategic ecosystems and cloud/data platform partnerships, aiming to drive adoption and growth across mature and emerging product lines.

Qualifications

• Built or scaled a partner, startup, or ecosystem program at a developer-focused or PLG company and held accountability for results.
• Autonomy and ownership are valued over years of experience.
• Experience with partner programs like AWS (APN, Marketplace, Activate) or Databricks.
• Good judgement to select partnerships worth pursuing.
• Technically fluent to earn engineers' trust and understand developer docs and APIs.
• Daily use of AI to tackle high-value problems and drive impact.

Responsibilities

• Define strategy, programs, and outcome metrics for partnership work; prioritize top partners.
• Build and run partner programs end to end: offer, onboarding, launch, and measurement.
• Turn partners into growth: activated startups, marketplace adoption, partner-sourced signups.
• Incorporate partner feedback into the Product roadmap.
• Pursue high-upside partnerships with Product/Engineering.
• Take partnerships to market: shape positioning, co-marketing, docs, and launches.

Skills

Autonomy

Founder experience

Engineering trust

AI usage

Tools

AWS APN Marketplace Activate

Databricks

Job description

KERNEL is hiring a Partnerships Lead to build and grow a network of partners that brings developers and startups to KERNEL. You will own partner programs end to end, from prioritization to onboarding, launch, and measuring impact, working closely with Sales for handoffs and with Product for roadmap alignment.

You will focus on strategic ecosystems and cloud/data platform partnerships, aiming to drive adoption and growth across mature and emerging product lines.