Manager Strategic Partnerships

About governr

governr is the control infrastructure for AI in regulated enterprises. We sit above the models, platforms and vendors enterprises are deploying, and convert technical signals into business and risk decisions, financial exposure, audit trails, control actions, and regulatory proof of control. Our first product went live at the end of March 2026. We onboarded our first cohort of clients and now actively signing up the next 50. The team is built from business, risk owners, technologists, engineers and AI leads from Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Soros, Citi and Morgan Stanley. We are the system of record for AI control. The regulatory window is open right now (EU AI, FCA, SMCR-AI, DORA, PS26/2, FINRA, SEC, Freddie Mac, NYDFS, MAS) is open right now.

The Role

You will run the partnerships motion day-to-day across two channels in equal measure:

* Advisory and channel partners: Firms who leverage governr into their AI assurance engagements, and white-label and reseller strategic partners who take us into adjacent verticals.

* Technology and ecosystem partners: hyperscalers, MLOps and GRC platforms where governr becomes the AI control layer in their stack.

This is an individual contributor role with significant ownership. You will work directly with the CCO and the founders, with full visibility of the commercial strategy and real influence over how the partner motion is built. You will help set the frameworks. The foundation partners we sign you will create compelling mutual value and pipeline.

What you'll do

* Own the day-to-day relationship with each active partner joint account mapping, AE-to-AE introductions, pipeline reviews, and deal acceleration. When a partner needs a demo on Thursday for a client meeting on Friday, you make it happen.

* Source and qualify new partners across both motions. Take them from first conversation to signed agreement to first joint deal measured in weeks, not quarters.

* Build the partner enablement that doesn’t yet exist partner playbooks, demo environments, joint sales playcards by sector, ROI calculators, and marketplace listings. Iterate every time a partner gives you feedback.

* Run joint pipeline reviews with each active partner. Track partner-sourced and partner-influenced ARR. Bring deals to commercial reviews with the founders and own them through to close.

* Represent governr at partner-hosted events, joint webinars, and selected industry forums. You are credible in the room and buyers and partner AEs both take you seriously.

Must-haves

* 3–6 years in partnerships, channel sales, business development or alliance roles.

* Meaningful time at an early-stage startup (Seed through Series B). You know what it means to build something from nothing, with a thin playbook and a tight runway.

* A track record of sourcing and closing partnerships that produced actual revenue not announcements, not press releases. We will ask you to walk us through deals you brought in and what they did to the top line.

* Comfortable across both channel and tech ecosystem motions. If you’ve only ever done reseller partnerships or only ever done cloud marketplace co-sell, that’s fine but you must be ready to operate fluently in both within your first quarter.

* Comfort partnering and selling into financial services, regulated enterprise, or enterprise SaaS. You don’t need to be a regulatory expert, we'll teach you that but you need to be unfazed by procurement, legal redlines and security questionnaires.

* Based in New York, in our offices, full-time. The team is here. The customers are here. The first wave of partners is here.

* Driven. Hungry. Treats a quiet pipeline as a personal failure. Can sit in a partner meeting on Tuesday, redraft the joint proposition on Wednesday, get the partner’s AE on a call with our prospect on Thursday, and have a pilot scoped by Friday.

Nice-to-haves

* Useful network density in one or more of: top-tier advisory and consulting firms; cloud and data platforms (Snowflake, Cloudflare, AWS, Azure, Databricks); GRC, MLOps, cyber, or AI tooling vendor; mid-tier and large financials in the UK, EU and US.

* Experience with marketplace listings (AWS, Azure, GCP, Snowflake) and co-sell programmes.

* Familiarity with AI, risk, compliance or financial services regulation.

* First-degree connections into Head of Risk, Head of AI, or Head of Compliance in financial services.

This is probably not the right fit if

* Your last role was running a structured partner programme inside a 5,000-person company.

* You need a defined process, a marketing team, and a steady cadence of inbound to be productive.

* You want to work remotely or part-time.

What you get

* Competitive base salary, performance-weighted commission tied to partner-sourced and partner-influenced ARR, and meaningful equity.

* A category being defined in real time, with profound consequence to AI deployment and control, in a decade.