Head of Alliances and Partnerships (REMOTE) at UpBound

Seattle, Washington, United States

UpBound Logo
Not SpecifiedCompensation
Senior (5 to 8 years), Expert & Leadership (9+ years)Experience Level
Full TimeJob Type
UnknownVisa
Technology, Cloud Infrastructure, Open SourceIndustries

Requirements

  • Accomplished and highly strategic experience in partnerships and alliances
  • Ability to build and scale relationships in open source ecosystems and commercial go-to-market execution
  • Deep collaboration skills across engineering, product, marketing, and sales teams
  • Expertise in earning trust in developer ecosystems, influencing technical direction, and driving measurable growth
  • Fluency in technical and commercial contexts, comfortable with maintainers and hyperscaler executives
  • Curiosity about AI and emerging infrastructure models
  • View of partnerships as systems for long-term category creation

Responsibilities

  • Build strategic relationships within the Crossplane ecosystem (contributors, maintainers, adjacent projects) to expand adoption and integration
  • Collaborate with open-source foundations and community leaders to strengthen the control plane and platform engineering ecosystem
  • Support co-marketing, education, and joint initiatives to celebrate community success and reinforce Upbound’s open source leadership
  • Partner with Developer Relations and Product teams for two-way collaboration between community innovation and enterprise needs
  • Identify, negotiate, and grow high-impact partnerships with hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP), ISVs, and SIs
  • Develop joint GTM strategies integrating Crossplane and Upbound into partner ecosystems, marketplaces, and managed services
  • Collaborate on technical integrations to expand Crossplane’s reach and reinforce Upbound’s commercial differentiation
  • Act as a bridge between open-source innovation, partner value creation, and enterprise adoption
  • Architect and execute partner-led GTM motions: co-selling, account mapping, co-marketing, sales enablement, joint value propositions
  • Work with marketing to create partner case studies, technical stories, and ecosystem campaigns highlighting real-world outcomes
  • Translate developer/community adoption into commercial opportunities with measurable pipeline impact
  • Leverage GTM and partner analytics tools to optimize engagement, track influence, and refine strategies
  • Design and operationalize a scalable partner program: onboarding, enablement, incentives, performance tracking
  • Define partner tiers, certification paths, and engagement models for open-source and commercial partners
  • Establish KPIs for ecosystem health, engagement, and partner-driven revenue
  • Collaborate with product and engineering leadership to align partnerships with roadmap priorities
  • Advocate for integration opportunities and feedback from open-source and commercial ecosystems
  • Drive alignment between Crossplane’s community direction and Upbound’s enterprise strategy

Skills

Crossplane
Open Source Ecosystem
Partnerships
Alliances
Go-to-Market
Community Engagement
Co-Marketing
Cloud Providers
ISVs
System Integrators

UpBound

Cloud-based solutions for infrastructure management

About UpBound

Upbound provides cloud-based solutions designed to help businesses streamline their operations and manage their cloud infrastructure more effectively. Their services include managed control planes that allow platform teams to scale resources as needed, ensuring optimal performance. A key feature is the ability to auto-scale control planes to support platforms with over 1,000 Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), which means resources can adjust automatically based on demand. Upbound also offers Upbound Spaces, enabling organizations to deploy managed control planes in their own environments, which is beneficial for compliance with data privacy regulations. Unlike many competitors, Upbound focuses on simplifying the management of various cloud service providers and tools through centralized control. The company's goal is to empower businesses to innovate rapidly while maintaining efficient infrastructure management, with a subscription-based model that generates recurring revenue.

Seattle, WashingtonHeadquarters
2017Year Founded
$67.1MTotal Funding
SERIES_BCompany Stage
Enterprise Software, CybersecurityIndustries
51-200Employees

Benefits

Equity
Health care benefits
401k plan
Work from anywhere
Flexible hours & PTO
Home office stipend

Risks

Name confusion with rent-to-own company involved in a lawsuit poses reputational risk.
Increased competition in cloud-native platforms may dilute Upbound's market share.
Rapid technological advancements require continuous innovation, straining Upbound's resources.

Differentiation

Upbound offers managed control planes powered by Crossplane, a unique cloud-native solution.
The company provides auto-scaling for platforms with over 1,000 Custom Resource Definitions.
Upbound Spaces allows deployment of managed control planes in private environments for data compliance.

Upsides

Increased adoption of Kubernetes boosts demand for Upbound's Crossplane solutions.
Multi-cloud strategies create opportunities for Upbound's centralized control solutions.
Rise of platform engineering increases need for Upbound's managed control planes.

Land your dream remote job 3x faster with AI