Senior Partner Manager – Cloud Native & Kubernetes (f,m,d)

About Us

At Kubermatic, we believe that businesses should focus on their core purpose: writing groundbreaking applications, not operations. In line with our commitment to make Kubernetes as easy as possible, we help IT teams worldwide to fully automate their Kubernetes and cloud native operations across multi-cloud, edge, and on-prem. 

As one of the top corporate contributors to the Kubernetes project, we develop enterprise-grade software solutions and provide professional services and support to safely navigate and accelerate your cloud native transformation. Our open-source Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform makes it easy to operate thousands of Kubernetes clusters on any infrastructure.

If you are thrilled by the prospect of joining a technology start-up with a lot of room for your own ideas and personal growth, we definitely should at least have a chat.

Role Summary

You own the partner motion end-to-end. Not a slice of it: the alliance with our lead infrastructure vendor partner and its distributors, the system integrator and prime-bidder relationships, and the program mechanics underneath. Tiering, deal registration, margin, enablement, and reporting.

You will have full program ownership. Your first months are structure and cleanup rather than administering something mature, and you'll have direct access to sales leadership and the founders while you build it.

What you will do

• Own the alliance with our lead infrastructure vendor partner and its distribution channel: joint account planning, deal registration, distributor quoting and price books, escalation into the vendor's field organisation.
• Own the system integrator relationships, including prime/subcontractor constructions where the SI bids and Kubermatic delivers, coordinating scope, pricing and the compliance paperwork with our bid desk and legal team.
• Own partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline end-to-end: recruit, onboard, activate, hold accountable.
• Build the partner program: tiering, margin and discount framework, deal registration, certification path with our training team, MDF (needs internal confirmation).
• Enable partner sales and pre-sales teams on the portfolio and on the plays that drive our market 
• Keep partner data and forecast honest in HubSpot, and report partner pipeline, attach rate and coverage to leadership.
• Feed partner requirements back into product and marketing: joint solution briefs, collateral, shared event presence.

What you need to succeed

Must-have

• You have built and grown B2B technology partnerships with OEMs, distributors, resellers or system integrators with personal responsibility for sourced or influenced revenue.
• You have sold through a two-tier or OEM channel: deal registration, distributor quoting, joint account planning with a partner seller through to a closed deal.
• You have worked deals in which the partner was the prime contractor and your company delivered as subcontractor, in public sector or large enterprise procurement.
• You are technically fluent enough in Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure to run a partner enablement session and qualify technical fit without an engineer in the room.
• German at C1 level and English at B2+,  our partners and public sector customers work in both.
• You are willing to travel regularly to partners, customers and industry events across DACH and the EU.

Nice-to-have

• You have stood up a channel program from scratch rather than inherited one.
• An existing network in the Kubernetes/CNCF ecosystem.
• Background at an infrastructure vendor or in an open-source/open-core commercial model.
• Working knowledge of HubSpot.