Manager, Channel & Partners

Japan is a partner-first market. You cannot operate effectively without strong local partners, and this is the most pressing of our APJ in-market needs despite being at the earliest stage. This is a standing start: you will land SpaceXAI's first local partners in Japan, open co-sell motions, and stand up FDE capacity in a market with no coverage today.

This is a team of one in-market with a speed mandate. You report into the Director of Partnerships APJ, which keeps the craft and standards under partnerships without splitting your accountability to the market.

This is an in-market role. You will spend a significant share of your time in person with partner principals, delivery teams, and customers across your market, and you will work closely with a small, high-talent-density global partnerships team that values in-person collaboration and fast, direct communication.

What you'll do

• Own the in-market partner business from concept to completion. Set the market partner strategy and sequencing from greenfield, then execute it personally.

• Accelerate SpaceXAI's global partners into your market and incubate them to productivity, across Technology and Transformation partnerships.

• Where gaps exist, recruit, onboard, and manage local partners from the ground up.

• Build and run co-sell motions, stand up FDE (forward deployed engineer) capacity, and drive C-level access and value-amplification programs through to landed wins.

• Turn partner relationships into qualified pipeline and closed co-sell revenue that feeds the in-market RVP number.

• Build the data picture for your market and use it to drive decisions, priorities, and forecasting.

• Own the operating system that keeps it repeatable: reporting, tracking, tiering, onboarding flows, partner QBRs, and cadence.

• Act as business partner to the in-market RVP, translating their go-to-market priorities into partner motion and giving them a clear, data-backed view of the business.

• Take ambiguous problems, from routes to market and contracting to partner economics, co-sell mechanics, channel conflict, localisation, FDE accreditation, and customer access, and drive them to a working outcome without the path laid out for you.

You may be a fit if

• You are fluent in Japanese and deeply understand the local technology and services partner ecosystem, especially SIs/GSIs. In a partner-first market, this is essential.

• You have professional working proficiency in English. You will engage consistently with HQ and present plans to English-speaking stakeholders, so you can operate and communicate confidently in English. Fluency in both Japanese and English is the highest-value combination for this role.

• You are a builder-operator, a doer rather than a coordinator, energized by owning a business from greenfield and running it as it grows.

• You have built and scaled technology, consulting, GSI, ideally in enterprise software, and carried a number against that work.

• You are fluent across partner business plans, program mechanics, enablement, and co-sell economics, and comfortable being accountable for the outcomes.

• You make decisions from data and can stand up the reporting and operating cadence yourself.

• You build durable relationships with partner principals and alliance leads, the kind of person partners choose to invest behind.

• You navigate negotiation and channel conflict with judgment, and you identify and influence the right internal and external people quickly.

• You operate credibly across diverse markets and decision-making styles, and you move fast.