Key Account Director, OEM – Aiven
We’re hiring a Key Account Director to own Aiven’s largest OEM and strategic technology partnerships across AMER. You’ll drive partner‑sourced and partner‑influenced revenue – building the relationships, programs, and cross‑functional alignment that turn partnerships into a measurable, growing share of ARR.
Full‑time
Who We’re Looking For
We’re looking for someone who thinks in partnerships, not transactions. You’ve spent your career embedded in the channel – recruiting partners, building programs, negotiating OEM and ISV agreements, and pulling together sales, marketing, engineering, and product teams to grow joint business.
You’re comfortable in a startup with no playbook and in a large enterprise where you have to create new habits between direct sellers and the partner ecosystem. What drives you is taking a partner relationship from a standing start – or a stalled one – and turning it into a self‑sustaining revenue engine. You have the YoY growth numbers, partner counts, and ARR contributions to prove it.
What Good Looks Like
- OEM and strategic partnerships – You’ve directly owned named OEM relationships – hardware, cloud, ISV embed deals – and can point to documented joint revenue growth from each.
- Channel and indirect selling – Your pipeline track record shows partner‑sourced and partner‑influenced deals (deal registration, PIO) – not just direct quota carrying.
- Infrastructure software background – You’ve sold data, cloud, open source, DevOps, or middleware products. You understand technical buyers and how developer‑led adoption actually works.
- Quantified revenue impact – You own your numbers: growth rate, customer satisfaction rate, contribution to ARR milestones.
- Cross‑functional orchestration – You’ve matrix‑managed sales, marketing, SAs, engineering, and ops to execute joint go‑to‑market plans – and you know how to move all of them in the same direction at the same time.
- Ecosystem fluency – You’re comfortable across GSIs (Accenture, PwC, EY, Tech Mahindra), RSIs (CDW, Insight, AHEAD, Optiv), ISVs, and the big‑3 clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP).
What Sets You Apart
- Built a channel or partner program from scratch
- Hyperscaler marketplace and co‑sell experience: AWS, Azure, or GCP private offers and marketplace transactions
- Been part of a company through an IPO or major funding milestone
- Fluent in open source commercial models: subscription, support, managed‑service monetization
- Public sector exposure (FED/SLED) as an additional partner‑led motion
- Managed direct or matrixed teams – a plus for this player‑coach scope, not a hard requirement