Sr. Director, VAR & Channel Partnerships

OpenKrill; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

vCluster Labs is hiring a Sr. Director, VAR & Channel Partnerships to build and lead the global partner channel, starting as an individual contributor and growing a team as the program proves itself.

You will target major VARs and resellers, drive deal registration, MDF, and co-sell alignment, and report on partner-sourced bookings and pipeline.

This is a founding role requiring strategic vision, executive relationships, and execution rigor in a fast-moving AI infrastructure market.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in channel, reseller, or partner sales in infrastructure software or AI infrastructure.
• Proven track record building a partner channel from early stage to revenue.
• Direct relationships with national and regional VARs.
• Strong understanding of tiering, deal registration, renewal rights, MDF governance.

Responsibilities

• Own global VAR and channel partnerships strategy, executive relationships, and commercial results.
• Recruit, activate, and retire partners based on ability to source AI infrastructure deals.
• Manage partner discounts, deal registration, PoR, renewal rights, and distribution to scale the motion.
• Align field sales with channel partners for co-sell opportunities and margin assurance.
• Drive MEDDPICC governance, quarterly business reviews, and pipeline transparency.

Skills

Channel leadership

Executive relationships

MEDDPICC

Forecasting & reporting

Negotation & deal strategy

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud-native

Job description

As Sr. Director, VAR & Channel Partnerships at vCluster Labs, you aren't just signing reseller agreements; you are building and leading the global partner channel that lets the world's AI infrastructure resellers sell tenant isolation without us in the room.

Enterprises do not buy AI infrastructure one product at a time. They buy it from the reseller who already holds the paper, the services capacity, and the trust. Your first targets are the partners where our path to the money is right now: WWT and Computacenter, then SHI, CDW, and the national and regional VARs that actually sell AI infrastructure. You can pull in distributors, and the OEM and ISV partners your peers own, where they accelerate a deal; the global system integrators (Accenture, Deloitte, EY) stay with the VP.

This is a founding, zero-to-one role on a first-year partner program. You start as an individual contributor: there is no channel to inherit, and you will carry the first partners and the first number yourself. As the channel proves out, you will hire and lead the team that scales it globally. Success is measured in partner-sourced bookings, transacting partners, and registered deals that close. Not in logos signed.

As Sr. Director, VAR & Channel Partnerships, your role will include:

• Global partner leadership: You will own vCluster's global VAR and channel partnerships end to end: the strategy, the executive relationships, and the commercial results. You will be vCluster's senior voice with partner leadership across North America, EMEA, and APJ, and you will decide where we invest and where we do not.
• Recruitment and activation: You will recruit against a filter, not for coverage. A short list of VARs who can actually source AI infrastructure and platform engineering deals beats a long list who cannot. You will own the path from first conversation to first transaction: agreement, track admission, enablement, first registered deal, and first close. You will also retire non-performing partners without drama. Time from signature to first dollar is your headline metric.
• Transaction mechanics: You will own the partner commercial model: tier discounts, deal-registration uplift, renewal margin, volume incentives, and named-account bonuses. You will run deal registration and Partner of Record, including regional PoR, active-engagement standards, renewal rights, and conflict resolution that holds up when two partners claim the same account. You will build distribution where it scales the motion, while keeping the quoting and order path clean enough that partners do not route around it.
• Field alignment: You will make co-sell comp-neutral so our sellers get full quota credit and never fight the channel. You will build named-account maps between vCluster sellers and partner sellers, with deal registration the field trusts. You will give partner sellers a reason to lead with vCluster: margin they can count on, services attach they can sell, and a technical story their SEs can carry.
• Multi-party plays with the ecosystem: You will connect VAR opportunities to the NVIDIA alliance and the OEM and ISV design wins your peers land, so a WWT or Computacenter seller can quote a validated stack with vCluster already inside it. Where a distributor accelerates a deal, you bring them in.
• Enablement, marketing, and MDF: You will own sales and technical certification for your partners and hold the tier requirements. You will run joint marketing with pipeline objectives attached: field events, webinars, named-account campaigns, and customer stories. You will approve MDF against pipeline outcomes and enforce proof of performance. Discretionary spend earns its return or it stops.
• Building the team: You will design the channel organization: the roles, the hiring sequence, and the coverage model by region and partner tier. As partner revenue grows, you will hire and lead partner managers and partner engineers, starting with the roles that unlock the most revenue.
• Owning the channel number: You will run MEDDPICC on every partner-attached opportunity and inspect pipeline weekly. Partner attribution is queryable from day one; pipeline we cannot query is pipeline we do not have. QBRs run on a fixed cadence with a fixed agenda: bookings against plan, named-account inspection, certification status, marketing execution, renewal health, and the forward-quarter plan. This is a first-year partner program with team MBOs and OKRs. You report your KPIs without being asked: transacting partners, sourced and attached pipeline and bookings, registration volume and win rate, certified resources, and MDF return.

This role could be a fit for you if you bring:

• Channel leadership with a number behind it: 8+ years in channel, reseller, or partner sales in infrastructure software, AI infrastructure, or cloud. You have a record of building a partner channel from early stage to producing revenue, ideally across more than one region: partners recruited, activated, and transacting, with the bookings to show for it. You can name the partners you activated and the revenue they produced.
• Executive partner relationships: Direct, current relationships with leadership at national and regional VARs, not just their field teams. That means WWT, Computacenter, SHI, CDW, Insight, Presidio, AHEAD, ePlus, Connection, Softcat, Mark III, and Pacific Teck. You have the depth to open a conversation in your first week. You know which partners actually sell AI infrastructure and which ones talk about it, and how a VAR makes money and how its sellers get paid. You know what has to be true for a rep to lead with your product instead of the one they already know.
• Channel mechanics: Working command of tier and discount structures, deal registration, Partner of Record, renewal rights, distribution, and MDF governance. You can defend a discount structure, resolve a channel conflict without losing either partner, and tell a partner no.
• AI infrastructure fluency: Working understanding of Kubernetes, cloud-native architecture, and GPU and AI infrastructure. Enough depth to earn credibility with a partner SE, and enough range to translate it into margin and services opportunity for their leadership.
• Builder of teams as well as channels: You are comfortable starting as a player with no team underneath you. You have hired and led partner managers or channel teams before, or you are clearly ready to, and you know which hire comes first and why.
• Influence without authority: Proven ability to mobilize sales, marketing, legal, and enablement teams on both sides of a partnership without direct organizational control. You write the program terms; you do not forward the ask.
• Operating rigor and a builder’s instinct: Disciplined qualification (MEDDPICC or equivalent), forecast hygiene, and reporting discipline. You pair this with comfort in an ambiguous, high-velocity environment with no inherited program. You compress timelines rather than manage them. Running an established channel is a different job; we are hiring for the build. A builder, not a caretaker.

Bonus points for:

• NVIDIA partner ecosystem experience, including NCP and reseller-facing programs
• Distribution experience with Arrow, TD SYNNEX, Ingram Micro, or regional equivalents
• Channel experience across EMEA and APJ as well as North America
• Public sector, sovereign, or regulated-industry channel experience
• Open-source commercial model experience: how a channel sells against a free tier

ABOUT VCLUSTER LABS

We're the #1 platform for AI infrastructure, trusted by the world's fastest-growing AI cloud builders. We're a venture-backed startup that's raised over $28M from top-tier investors including Khosla Ventures (first investor in OpenAI, GitLab, Stripe, and DoorDash), and we're in a hyper-growth phase looking for motivated people to join our team. Our headquarters are in San Francisco (Salesforce Tower), but our team is distrib