Director, AI Partnerships jobs in United States
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Zendesk · 2 days ago

Director, AI Partnerships

Zendesk is seeking a senior leader to take ownership of their AI Partner Strategy, ensuring the company remains at the forefront of Generative AI and LLM innovation. The role involves building and managing relationships with AI platforms and technology partners, driving engagement models, and adapting to the fast-changing AI landscape.

Customer ServiceData ManagementEnterprise SoftwareSoftwareTechnical Support
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H1B Sponsor Likelynote

Responsibilities

Take ownership of Zendesk’s AI partner strategy, in close alignment with Zendesk’s product, engineering and CTO leaders
Drive the development and ongoing management of programmatic engagement with the AI technology partner ecosystem (ISVs, Developers, hyperscalers). Continuously update Zendesk’s understanding of the evolving AI ecosystem, including partner and commercial frameworks that can impact Zendesk’s own strategy. Educate Zendesk leaders and executives to help them respond to a rapidly changing environment
Build close technical and commercial relationships with leading GenAI platforms such as AWS, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, ensuring that Zendesk remains at the forefront of AI and LLM innovation
Work with priority tech partners to align on AI product integration strategy and plans, execute on them and jointly promote the integrated value propositions to the market
Identify marketing opportunities with GenAI Platform vendors and tech partners to raise Zendesk’s profile and visibility in the market, and generate pipeline

Qualification

AI Partner StrategyGenAI platform experienceTechnology alliances expertiseProduct managementEngineering degreeTechnical leadershipBusiness degreeMBA

Required

Demonstrable experience building with and/or working closely with GenAI platform vendors and ISV partners
Good understanding of the Agentic AI ecosystem and technology evolution
Mix of both product management/technical as well as technology alliances expertise
For candidates with a product/technical background - a seasoned product management or technical leader with experience in AI product development - 10+ years relevant work experience
For candidates with a business/partnership background - extensive experience managing partnerships with hyper-scalers as well as working with GenAI platform vendors - 10+ years in technology partner management
Must have an engineering or technical bachelor's degree at a minimum

Preferred

Business degree and an MBA would be a bonus

Benefits

Bonus
Benefits
Related incentives

Company

Zendesk develops a customizable customer service platform for organizations.

H1B Sponsorship

Zendesk has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (50)
2024 (69)
2023 (37)
2022 (92)
2021 (93)
2020 (44)

Funding

Current Stage
Public Company
Total Funding
$85.5M
Key Investors
RedpointMatrixBenchmark
2022-11-22Private Equity
2022-06-24Acquired
2019-09-18Grant

Leadership Team

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Mikkel Asger Svane
CEO and Co-Founder
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Adrian McDermott
Chief Technology Officer
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Company data provided by crunchbase