Senior Partner Manager - VARs (West)

Chainguard; California (MO); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote-First Culture

Stock options / Equity

Health Insurance

Flexible Time Off

Parental Leave

Job summary

Chainguard is seeking a strategic partner/business development professional to manage VAR/sales partnerships and drive revenue. You will collaborate with regional system integrators, co-sell with field teams, and enable partners to position Chainguard effectively across security and cloud-native offerings.

The ideal candidate is data-driven, an excellent communicator, with startup experience and a proven track record of meeting quotas while working cross-functionally to scale partner success.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of Software Channel Manager experience required.
• Experience working with and through VARs.
• Successful sales background with quota attainment.
• Startup experience a plus.
• Entrepreneurial self-starter with ability to structure complex problems.
• Strong verbal and written communication and public speaking.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to build rapport.
• Team player and ability to work independently.
• Strong technical aptitude.
• Data, metric-driven.

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline and revenue outcomes across VARs and Regional System Integrators.
• Drive pipeline creation through joint prospecting and co-selling with field sales teams.
• Improve partner attach rates by positioning Chainguard as a core security/cloud-native solution.
• Accelerate deal velocity by ensuring partners are enabled and engaged early in the sales cycle.
• Identify, recruit, and prioritize high-performing partners.
• Execute joint business planning with partners and track progress.
• Drive partner readiness metrics including certifications and demos.
• Increase partner-driven demand through regional marketing campaigns and events.
• Maintain forecast accuracy and pipeline hygiene in SFDC.
• Partner cross-functionally to remove friction and scale partner success.

Skills

Channel management

Partner relations

Quota attainment

Public speaking

Interpersonal skills

Data-driven

Startup experience

Independent work

Technical aptitude

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk. Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake. Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital. The role, in a nutshell: We’re looking for a highly motivated strategic partner/business development professional (VARs) who has strong market knowledge, a cloud and security network, and enjoys building relationships with key decision makers to evangelize building secure and reliable software. Our sales team walks a mile in their customers shoes and wants our customers and prospects to see the immense value and expertise Chainguard's solutions offer.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Own and deliver partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline and revenue outcomes across a portfolio of assigned VARs and Regional System Integrators, with clear accountability for contribution to overall bookings.
• Drive consistent pipeline creation through joint prospecting, partner-led opportunity identification, and co-selling motions with aligned field sales teams.
• Improve partner attach rates by enabling partners to position Chainguard as a core component of their security, cloud-native, and modernization offerings.
• Accelerate deal velocity and win rates by ensuring partners are effectively enabled, engaged early in the sales cycle, and aligned to customer use cases.
• Identify, recruit, and prioritize high-performing partners that demonstrate sustained investment in Chainguard through sales focus, technical enablement, and go-to-market execution.
• Execute joint business planning with partners, including pipeline targets, solution focus areas, enablement milestones, and marketing initiatives, and track progress through quarterly and annual business reviews.
• Drive measurable progress in partner readiness metrics, including certifications, solution validation, demo capability, and delivery confidence.
• Increase partner-driven demand generation impact through joint regional marketing campaigns, events, and field activities, with clear attribution to pipeline creation and opportunity progression.
• Maintain strong forecast accuracy and pipeline hygiene by managing partner opportunities in SFDC and related tools, ensuring visibility into sourced, influenced, and co-sell deals.
• Partner cross-functionally with sales, solution engineering, marketing, and partner operations to remove friction, improve execution efficiency, and scale partner success.

Required Skills / Experience:

• 5+ years of Software Channel Manager experience required.
• Experience working with and through VARs.
• Successful sales background required having carried and overachieved quota.
• Startup experience a plus.
• Entrepreneurial self-starter, who knows how to structure and breakdown ambiguous problems into executable steps.
• Strong verbal and written communication including high level of comfort with public speaking and excellent presentation skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to build rapport with a variety of groups.
• Team player and ability to work independently.
• Strong technical aptitude.
• Data, metric-driven.

About Us We live and breathe our company values: We are customer obsessed - We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better. We have a bias for intentional action - We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast. We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) - We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey. We trust each other and assume good intentions - We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.

A few of the benefits we offer:

• Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
• Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
• 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
• Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need - to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
• 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.

We're building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring "Chainguardians" with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

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