Technical Alliances Lead

Technical Alliances Lead Operant AI | Full-Time | Hybrid Set-up in the SF Bay Area About Operant AI Operant AI is the industry's most comprehensive real-time security platform for AI, Agents, and MCP. Recognized across six Gartner critical AI security reports — including AI TRiSM, MCP Gateways, API Protection, and Securing Custom-Built AI Agents — Operant is the category-defining company protecting the agentic AI era. Our platform delivers real-time discovery, detection, and defense across the full AI stack: LLM APIs, MCP servers and clients, autonomous agents, and the APIs they depend on. Founded by former Apple, VMware, and Google executives and backed by Felicis and SineWave Ventures, we're a fast-moving team on a mission to make AI innovation safe at scale. The Role We're looking for a Director of Technical Alliances to own and scale our strategic partnerships with leading AI infrastructure providers — including Cerebras, Nutanix, Tenstorrent , and others we'll build together. This is a senior, high-impact role sitting at the intersection of technical depth and business development, designed for someone who can walk into a partner's engineering team in the morning and present a joint go-to-market strategy to their VP of Partnerships in the afternoon. You'll be the primary relationship owner and technical authority for our most important infrastructure partnerships — driving integration strategy, enabling joint customer success, and building the connective tissue between Operant AI and the ecosystems we depend on and strengthen. What You'll Do Partnership Strategy & Executive Engagement Own the end-to-end relationship with key AI infrastructure partners, including executive alignment, business planning, and QBRs Develop and execute joint go-to-market strategies that drive measurable pipeline and revenue for both Operant AI and our partners Establish Operant AI as the preferred security and observability partner across AI compute and cloud infrastructure ecosystems Identify and prioritize new strategic alliance opportunities as the AI infrastructure landscape evolves Technical Leadership & Integration Oversight Define the technical integration vision and roadmap for each partner relationship, working closely with Operant AI's engineering and product teams Serve as a hands-on technical authority in partner conversations — capable of diving deep into AI inference infrastructure, runtime environments, orchestration layers, and security integration points Oversee the end-to-end execution of joint integrations from architecture through production readiness, ensuring quality, reliability, and mutual value Translate complex technical requirements between partner engineering teams and Operant AI's internal stakeholders Joint Customer & Revenue Development Drive co-sell and co-solution motions with partner field and sales teams to source and close shared customer opportunities Act as a trusted technical advisor to joint customers evaluating or deploying Operant AI on partner infrastructure Build joint solution briefs, reference architectures, and enablement materials that equip partner teams to position Operant AI effectively Track and report on partner-influenced pipeline, integration adoption, and customer outcomes Ecosystem Building Represent Operant AI at partner events, technical summits, and industry conferences Champion partner needs internally — providing feedback loops to product and engineering that shape Operant AI's roadmap Build and maintain strong relationships across partner organizations at the technical, field, and executive levels What We're Looking For Experience 8+ years in technical alliances, partner engineering, sales engineering, or a combination thereof — ideally within AI, cloud infrastructure, or enterprise software Demonstrated experience managing strategic technology partnerships with hardware or infrastructure providers (AI accelerators, cloud platforms, hyperconverged infrastructure, or similar) Track r