Head of Partnerships

Job Description

Job Description

About vCluster Labs

We are a venture-backed tech startup striving to be the leading force in enabling platform engineers. We raised +$30M from top-tier VCs such as Khosla Ventures (first investor in OpenAI, GitLab, Stripe, Doordash) and are in a hyper-growth phase looking for motivated people to complement our team. Our headquarters are in San Francisco (Salesforce Tower), but our team is distributed around the globe and we have a remote-first work culture .

We're the company behind vCluster, an open-source technology for virtualizing Kubernetes (+10k GitHub stars). Open source is part of our DNA.

The adoption of our commercial product based on vCluster has grown extremely fast (multi-million dollar revenue) and our customer base includes some of the biggest companies in the world, including 6 Global Fortune 500 companies as well as some of the fastest-growing tech unicorns.

Responsibilities

Lead Strategic Partnerships : Identify, initiate, and manage partnerships with data center infrastructure vendors (GPUs, hardware, networking, storage), cloud providers, Kubernetes-focused startups, and major CNCF projects to drive product adoption and ecosystem growth.

Build Joint Value Propositions : Co-design technical integrations, reference architectures, solution bundles, or go-to-market campaigns that demonstrate vCluster's value in real-world use cases.

Own Relationship Development : From first outreach to signed OEM agreements, including long-term growth of the relationship and everything that contributes to mutual success—marketing, sales, engineering, and executive touchpoints.

Drive Awareness Through Collaboration : Collaborate with partners on blog posts, webinars, case studies, conference talks, and joint events to showcase what we’re doing together.

Work Cross-Functionally : Partner with Product to explore technical integrations, with Marketing to amplify joint efforts, and with Sales to unlock channel or co-selling opportunities.

Stay Close to the Ecosystem : You’ll be deeply plugged into what’s happening in the Kubernetes / CNCF / Infrastructure space, always looking for the next breakout tool, emerging trend, or commercial synergy.

Requirements

Know the Kubernetes Ecosystem Cold : You’ve worked in or with cloud-native companies, understand the CNCF landscape, and can speak credibly about infrastructure, workloads, and enterprise platforms.

Understand Both Tech and Business : You can discuss NVIDIA GPUs, OpenStack integrations, or HyperShift vs vCluster one minute, and negotiate partner margins or BD strategy the next.

Have Rolled Up Your Sleeves Before : You’ve built or launched a successful partner program, negotiated strategic deals, or led integrations from scratch—not just managed them.

Are a Builder and Operator : You don’t wait for playbooks—you write them. You turn “we should partner with X” into “we’ve shipped a joint solution with X and presented it at KubeCon.”

Can Navigate Startups and Giants : You’re as comfortable working with early-stage founders as you are negotiating terms with major hardware giants.

Bonus Points

Existing relationships with Kubernetes ecosystem leaders at companies like NVIDIA, Dell, AWS, Azure, as well as any major OSS startup companies in the CNCF space

Experience in channel / solution sales, tech alliances, or field / partner marketing

Background in infrastructure tools, platform engineering, and open source business models preferred

Benefits

We offer the following benefits :

Competitive Salary : We offer a competitive compensation package, including equity.

Platinum-Level Insurance : Health, dental, vision, and life Insurance, including plans for you and eligible dependents (benefits vary depending on country).

Flexible Working Schedule :   You have a doctor’s appointment or need to head to the supermarket to get groceries at 2pm? We won’t have an issue with that. To us, results matter more than clocking in and out at the same time every day.

Workplace Flexibility :   We’re very flexible about where you work. We know things can change in life and we’re happy to adjust the work environment for you along the way.

Why join a startup like vCluster Labs?

Since we are a fast-moving startup, you will not be number 14,589 in our company but rather become an essential part of our team right from the start :

Fast Application Process :   We will typically get back to you within a week. No need to polish your resume for us. Just send us some links (e.g. LinkedIn, etc.), answer a few questions about your previous experiences, and hop on a quick Zoom call with one of our team members to see if you’re a good fit. We will respond quickly and make hiring decisions within days rather than months.

Open-Minded Work Environment : You can always speak your mind - no company politics or unnecessary formalities. We are operating in a lean, honest, and efficient way and we are looking for different perspectives, constructive feedback and creative, motivated people who want to make a difference.

Grow With The Company :  We are a small company right now but we are growing incredibly fast because we work on something that has a lot of value to engineering teams in large enterprises. Joining vCluster Labs early will give you the chance to advance much faster to the next step on the career ladder than in any larger company.

Responsibility From Day 1 : You will see right from the start that your work will immediately have an impact in our company and you can shape the future of this company together with the rest of our team. Grow with us and benefit from being part of this journey from the start.

Culture & Values

At vCluster Labs, we value and stand for :

Technical Excellence : We are determined to build best-in-class technology and ship high-quality software because we know that our users are engineers themselves.

Customer Obsession : We are going above and beyond to make our customers and users happy, which means striving for great usability, excellent documentation and support as well as fast response times for feature requests and bug reports.

Impressive Speed : From user feedback to shipping a new feature to address this feedback, we usually take less than a week in most cases and our users absolutely love us for this.

Bold Innovation : We are constantly questioning the state-of-the-art to find and address important issues in our space, even if that means abandoning any existing technologies and starting from scratch again.

Open Source & Open Mind : We are actively contributing and maintaining open-source projects and we believe that building an open-minded team culture that respects different perspectives and welcomes constructive feedback is equally paramount to our success.

vCluster Labs provides equal opportunities for all candidates. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive work environment for everyone who becomes part of our team. We are also actively promoting measures to reduce bias throughout our hiring process to ensure that everyone gets the same opportunities.

Compensation Range : $160K - $200K