Cloud Alliances Business Development Lead

About Canonical

Canonical is a leading provider of open source software and operating systems to the global enterprise and technology markets. Our platform, Ubuntu, is very widely used in breakthrough enterprise initiatives such as public cloud, data science, AI, engineering innovation, and IoT. Our customers include the world's leading public cloud and silicon providers, and industry leaders in many sectors. The company is a pioneer of global distributed collaboration, with 1200+ colleagues in 75+ countries and very few office-based roles. Teams meet two to four times yearly in person, in interesting locations around the world, to align on strategy and execution.

The company is founder-led, profitable, and growing.

The Role: Cloud Alliances Business Development Lead

We are hiring for our Cloud Alliances Business Development Lead to coordinate our ‘go-to-market’ with tier 1 Cloud Partners. This role involves developing joint product roadmaps, driving delivery, and formulating go-to-market plans, content, and processes. The goal is to enable differentiated offerings and robust product life-cycle support, anchored to best-in-class Canonical products. This position supports the interaction of Canonical’s sales, marketing, and alliances teams with counterparts at the cloud to jointly service customers and prospects. You will be responsible for quarterly and yearly public cloud derived revenue budget forecasts.

The successful candidate is someone who is passionate about tech and driving revenue growth through collaboration. If you are data-driven and skilled at navigating complex new technical challenges, learn quickly, and ready to architect strategies across global teams, this challenging role is for you.

Location: This role will be based remotely in the Americas region.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborating with product, engineering, alliance, and marketing teams at a cloud partner to align on open-source strategies.
• Capturing partner requirements, evaluating gaps, and identifying Canonical opportunities.
• Coordinating with marketing and product teams on messaging, content creation, and launch plans.
• Creating partner- and customer-facing materials like reference architectures, joint blueprints, webinars, presentations, videos, and white papers.
• Driving Ubuntu adoption within targeted alliance accounts, advocating its benefits to stakeholders, and working with partners on enablement training for their development, delivery, support, and commercial teams.
• Influencing Cloud customers to build with Canonical technology.
• Up to 25% travel, including internationally, for internal conferences and to drive partnerships in person.

What We're Looking For

• Exceptional academic track record from both high school and university or a compelling narrative about your alternative chosen path.
• Bachelor's degree in science, technology, and/or engineering.
• Experience in software development and system architecture.
• Customer-facing experience in software engineering, product management, business development, technology strategy, or similar functions.
• Excellent communication skills across all levels of stakeholders - individual contributors to the C-suite; ability to grasp complex material and synthesize key points.
• Ability to think and work at both strategic and tactical levels.
• Disciplined and self-motivated for a remote-first workplace environment.

Nice-to-Have Skills & Experience

• Experience with open source software and open source business models.
• Team leadership, product management, or program management experience.
• Understanding of marketing and go-to-market strategy.
• Sector-specific experience in finance, telecommunications, automotive, or public sectors.
• Working knowledge of independent hardware and software vendor go-to-market motions.
• Post-graduate degree in science, technology, or engineering field.

What We Offer Colleagues

We consider geographical location, experience, and performance in shaping compensation worldwide. We revisit compensation annually (and more often for graduates and associates) to ensure we recognize outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven annual bonus or commission. We provide all team members with additional benefits which reflect our values and ideals. We balance our programs to meet local needs and ensure fairness globally.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team sprints in person.
• Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year.
• Annual compensation review.
• Recognition rewards.
• Annual holiday leave.
• Maternity and paternity leave.
• Team Member Assistance Program & Wellness Platform.
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues.
• Priority Pass and travel upgrades for long-haul company events.

Key skills/competency

• Cloud Alliances
• Business Development
• Go-to-Market Strategy
• Open Source Software
• Ubuntu Adoption
• Partnership Management
• Revenue Growth
• Technical Evangelism
• Solution Architecture
• Remote Collaboration