Strategic Partnerships Lead - Vercel

About Vercel

Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company. We free people and agents to ship what’s next.

For more than a decade, Vercel has shaped how the web is built. As the team behind Next.js, v0, and AI SDK, we create products that help builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.

Now, software is entering a new era, and the next generation of products will not just be used by people. They will be built, extended, and operated by agents.

We are building the platform for that future, trusted by companies like OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide. Whether you’re building our products, supporting our customers, growing our community, or shaping our story, you’ll help define what comes next.

About the Role

Vercel is hiring a Strategic Partnerships Lead to develop first-of-a-kind partnerships that inflect the company's growth. Done well, these partnerships open distribution for our products, create new pipeline for our field teams, and/or add new capabilities to our platform. This is a highly cross-functional and technical role: you will spend as much time with product and engineering leaders as with commercial ones, both with partners and with Vercelians.

You will report to the Head of Strategic Partnerships and own a named set of partners that includes hyperscalers, frontier AI labs, silicon vendors, and commerce and enterprise software platforms. The work takes a different shape with each one, but the common thread is that these partnerships live close to the product: embedding Vercel inside a partner's platform, co-building new products, taking a joint offering to enterprises that neither company could sell alone. Structuring a deal means both understanding the technical components well enough to know what a partnership makes possible and understanding what the business impact could be if done successfully.

We expect candidates to demonstrate significant experience delivering complex deal work, creating and driving strategy, working with cross-functional teams to launch new initiatives, and initiating first-of-a-kind partnerships. We are looking for someone with a strong sense of ownership who performs at a senior level and does their best work with limited direction.

Note: This is a hybrid position requiring 3 days per week in one of our San Francisco, Austin, or New York City offices.

What You Will Do

• Own a named set of strategic partners end to end, from first conversation through signed agreement to launch and growth
• Identify and develop new partnerships with the companies that matter most to Vercel's strategy across AI, cloud, commerce, and enterprise software
• Build the business case: size the opportunity, scope the product and engineering investment it requires, and give leadership a clear recommendation, including when the recommendation is to pass
• Lead negotiations end to end, structuring commercial agreements that are new to Vercel and often new to the partner: revenue share, embedded pricing, co-sell commitments, marketplace terms
• Develop senior relationships on the partner side and bring Vercel executives in where the relationship calls for it
• Lead cross-functional teams across Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Legal to take a signed agreement to launch
• Advise Vercel leadership on where the ecosystem is moving and what it means for our roadmap
• Run deals with structure: clear milestones, agreed measures of success on both sides, and the judgment to stop the ones that are not working

About You

• 8+ years developing, negotiating, and executing complex commercial agreements, ideally at a platform, infrastructure, cloud, or developer tools company
• A track record of initiating partnerships that had no precedent, with companies significantly larger than your own, with clear mastery of won and conceded terms
• Experience structuring deals with significant technical surface area: platform integrations, embedded or whitelabeled product, licensing, infrastructure, and compute commitments
• Ability to hold credible conversations with partner product and engineering teams about agents, inference, model routing, and cloud infrastructure
• Experience creating and driving strategy, and getting an organization to fund it
• Comfortable leading cross-functional teams you do not manage across Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, and Sales
• Strong agency, speed, and comfort with ambiguity
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with executive stakeholders

Bonus Points

• Experience managing partnerships at or with a hyperscaler, a frontier AI lab, or a large commerce/enterprise software platform
• Track record structuring technology licensing, OEM, or embedded distribution agreements
• Background in a technical role (engineering, solutions architecture, or technical product) prior to commercial work

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package, including equity
• Inclusive healthcare package
• Learn and Grow: mentorship and support for industry events, skills development, and network expansion
• Flexible time off
• Complete home office gear and a WFH budget to outfit your workspace