Senior Partnerships Manager

Runware

Senior Partnerships Manager owning and scaling strategic relationships with leading AI model providers at Runware. Ensuring commercial terms and product access translate to business value.

Posted 5/19/2026full-timeRemote • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Cloud

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own and negotiate strategic model-provider relationships: Manage and deepen relationships with the leading generative media model providers - spanning frontier labs, generative media model creators, open-source communities, audio and 3D model providers, and inference infrastructure partners. Our current ecosystem includes partners such as Google, OpenAI, Black Forest Labs, ElevenLabs, Luma AI, ByteDance, Runway, and Ideogram, among many others across image, video, audio, and 3D modalities. You will own the full commercial relationship end-to-end and maintain strong visibility into partner roadmaps, launches, pricing changes, model capabilities, and strategic opportunities.
Negotiate best-in-market commercial terms: Lead negotiations on pricing, volume commitments, credits, preferred access, support levels, SLAs, roadmap visibility, co-marketing, launch support, enterprise terms, and non-standard strategic deal structures.
Turn partnerships into business value: Identify and execute opportunities that improve product capabilities, reduce costs, improve margins, accelerate model launches, enhance customer experience, or differentiate Runware in the market.
Coordinate across internal teams: Act as the connective tissue between model providers and Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, and leadership. Coordinate product evaluation, integration handoffs with Product and Engineering, customer messaging, sales enablement, finance modeling, and legal/commercial review.
Maintain AI market intelligence: Track new model releases, benchmark shifts, pricing changes, context-window improvements, multimodal capabilities, latency and reliability tradeoffs, enterprise terms, ecosystem moves, and competitor access. Convert this information into clear internal updates and recommendations.
Drive partner-led launches on the commercial side: Coordinate timing with model creators, secure preferred or exclusive access, align launch narratives across Marketing and Sales, partner with Product and Engineering on the integration build, and ensure launches translate into measurable pipeline impact.
Support GTM and customer communication: Help Sales and Marketing translate model-provider updates into customer-facing value, launch narratives, partner comparison notes, competitive positioning, sales enablement, and customer-ready messaging.
Build a scalable partnership operating rhythm: Create and maintain partner account plans, executive relationship maps, QBRs, negotiation trackers, pricing and terms databases, launch calendars, model-update summaries, escalation paths, and partnership performance reporting.

Requirements

What you’ll need

7+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, partner management, commercial strategy, enterprise sales, vendor management, or a related role.
Strong track record negotiating complex commercial agreements with strategic partners, vendors, platforms, infrastructure providers, SaaS companies, cloud providers, API companies, or technology ecosystems.
Excellent commercial judgment, including the ability to evaluate pricing, usage commitments, deal structures, margin impact, and long-term strategic value.
Proven ability to work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, and executive stakeholders.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical and commercial information for different audiences.
High ownership, strong follow-through, structured execution, and comfort operating in a fast-moving, ambiguous market.
Strongly preferred
Experience in AI, machine learning, cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, API businesses, SaaS, data infrastructure, or enterprise software.
Understanding of the AI model ecosystem: frontier labs, open-source models, inference providers, multimodal models, model pricing, latency, context windows, enterprise deployment needs, and AI application architecture.
Technical fluency sufficient to discuss model performance, API capabilities, inference requirements, context windows, multimodality, fine-tuning, evaluation, latency, reliability, and model launches.
Prior experience negotiating with large technology vendors, cloud providers, platform partners, or strategic ecosystem partners.
Experience building partner programs, partner operating cadences, QBRs, partner scorecards, or executive-level relationship maps.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Generous paid time off – vacation, sick days, public holidays
Meaningful stock options – share in the upside you create
Remote-first setup – work from home anywhere we can employ you
Flexible hours – own your schedule outside core collaboration blocks
Family leave – paid maternity, paternity, and caregiver time
Company retreats – twice-yearly gatherings in inspiring locations

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

negotiationcommercial strategypartner managemententerprise salesvendor managementAImachine learningcloud infrastructureAPISaaS

Soft Skills

communicationcross-functional collaborationcommercial judgmentstructured executionownershipfollow-throughsimplifying complex informationadaptabilityrelationship buildingstrategic thinking