Strategic Cloud Partnerships Lead

About Vercel: Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company, freeing people and agents to ship what's next. For more than a decade we've helped builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience. Now we're scaling our products for both agents and people to ship and run software, built in the open and trusted by OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide. About the Role: Vercel is hiring a Strategic Cloud Partnerships Lead to own and grow our relationships with the cloud and infrastructure companies that underpin our platform and help us reach enterprise customers. This role sits at the intersection of infrastructure, product, and go-to-market. You will work with Vercel’s Product and Engineering teams to understand how we use our partners’ infrastructure today, identify where deeper technical collaboration could improve our platform or economics, and turn those opportunities into executable partnership strategies. At the same time, you will build joint go-to-market motions that create pipeline, accelerate enterprise deals, and make Vercel more strategic to our partners’ field organizations. You will report to the Head of Strategic Partnerships and own a named set of cloud partners end to end. You will work across those partners’ product, engineering, sales, marketplace, and executive teams, connecting technical opportunities with commercial outcomes. This is not a role for someone who only manages relationships or coordinates partner programs. You will need the technical depth to understand how Vercel is leveraging—or could leverage—a partner’s compute, networking, storage, security, data, and AI infrastructure. You will also need the commercial judgment and executive presence to build a joint business case, mobilize two organizations, and hold your own in conversations with sophisticated enterprise customers. We are looking for someone with strong ownership who operates at a senior level, moves comfortably between technical and commercial discussions, and does their best work with limited direction. This is a hybrid position, based in San Francisco, with in-office anchor days on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. What You Will Do: Own a named set of strategic cloud partners end to end, with accountability for the health, growth, and business impact of each relationship Develop a clear strategy and joint business plan for each partner, covering technical priorities, commercial opportunities, go-to-market motions, investments, and measures of success Build a detailed understanding of how Vercel uses each partner’s infrastructure today and identify opportunities to improve performance, reliability, geographic reach, product capabilities, or unit economics Work with Product, Engineering, and Infrastructure to evaluate new partner capabilities and determine where deeper integrations or architectural changes could create meaningful value Build the business case for new initiatives: size the opportunity, define the customer value, scope the technical investment, model the economics, and give leadership a clear recommendation Develop and execute joint go-to-market motions, including co-selling, account mapping, marketplace programs, solution development, field enablement, demand generation, and executive engagement Create new pipeline and help Vercel’s sales teams advance strategic enterprise opportunities through our partners Join enterprise customer conversations and communicate credibly with CIOs, CTOs, architects, developers, security leaders, procurement teams, and business buyers Translate complex infrastructure and architecture decisions into clear customer and business outcomes Build strong relationships across partner organizations, from infrastructure and product teams to field sellers, partner leaders, and senior executives Lead negotiations involving cloud consumption, commercial commitments, marketplace terms, co-sell investments, product integrations, and joint customer offerings Lead cross-functional teams across Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Legal to move initiatives from concept through agreement, launch, and growth Establish operating rhythms, executive business reviews, and measurable success criteria that keep both organizations aligned and accountable Advise Vercel leadership on changes in cloud infrastructure, enterprise buying behavior, partner roadmaps, and the broader competitive landscape Run partnerships with structure and urgency, including the judgment to expand initiatives that are working and stop the ones that are not About You: 8+ years of experience in cloud partnerships, strategic alliances, business development, enterprise sales, or a related role at a cloud, infrastructure, developer tools, or platform company A track record of building and growing strategic relationships with major cloud or infrastructure providers Strong go-to-market experience, including developing joint value propositions, launching co-sell motions, creating pipeline, and helping close complex enterprise opportunities Experience working directly with large enterprise customers and the executive presence to represent Vercel in high-stakes commercial and technical conversations Strong technical fluency across modern cloud infrastructure and application delivery. You do not need to be an engineer, but you can understand architectures, ask incisive technical questions, and earn credibility with product and engineering teams The ability to reason about how compute, networking, storage, security, observability, data, and AI infrastructure affect platform capabilities, customer experience, and business economics Experience developing business cases that connect technical investment with customer adoption, revenue, strategic value, or cost efficiency Commercial judgment and experience negotiating complex agreements, inc