Vice President, Global Partnerships

Role Overview

The Vice President of Global Partnerships will shape and execute the organization’s worldwide partnership strategy. This leadership role focuses on creating and scaling a partner network across international markets, while driving high-value collaborations with global clients, technology allies, channel partners, cloud providers, government bodies, research organizations, and industry associations to support growth, geographic expansion, and stronger global brand presence.

In many organizations, this position reports to the Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Senior Vice President of Global Business, or Chief Executive Officer. It is a senior management role within the multinational business development and ecosystem function, and is especially important in large technology, financial services, semiconductor, and healthcare companies.

Primary Objectives

• Build and scale a worldwide partnership ecosystem.
• Accelerate business growth across global markets.
• Broaden the company’s international footprint.
• Create durable strategic alliances.
• Increase revenue generated through partners.
• Advance the company’s international expansion agenda.

Key Responsibilities

Global partnership strategy: Develop and refine long-term partnership plans covering ecosystem design, regional operating models, global market coverage, alliance development, channel strategy, and international collaboration planning, ensuring alignment with overall business goals.

Partnership relationship management: Establish and sustain relationships with strategic customers, channel partners, cloud service providers, system integrators, software and technology partners, OEM/ODM partners, consulting firms, universities, research institutions, industry groups, and public-sector organizations across key countries and regions.

Business development: Create opportunities for joint solutioning, co-selling, co-marketing, market entry, channel growth, technology licensing, and broader global alliance creation while steadily expanding the partnership portfolio.

Ecosystem development: Design partner programs, certification frameworks, incentive structures, and lifecycle management practices for channel, developer, ISV, and broader alliance ecosystems to improve engagement and long-term value.

Cross-border project leadership: Lead partnership evaluations, negotiations, contract execution, implementation, resource coordination, risk handling, and performance tracking to ensure successful delivery of collaborative initiatives.

Cross-functional coordination: Work closely with strategic planning, global sales, marketing, product, R&D, legal, finance, compliance, customer success, and regional business teams to keep partnership execution efficient and aligned.

Market expansion: Support overseas growth through market-entry planning, regional partner development, localized partnership models, global branding partnerships, trade shows, industry events, and international investment partnerships.

Risk and compliance: Put in place a partnership risk framework covering commercial, contractual, trade compliance, privacy, IP, sanctions/export controls, and reputational exposures, while ensuring adherence to local laws, regulations, and governance requirements.

Team leadership: Build and manage a global partnerships organization, including recruitment, team formation, performance management, leadership development, and international talent development for roles such as directors, regional leads, managers, alliance leaders, and partner success teams.

Required Background

The ideal candidate should have a strong academic foundation in business administration, international business, marketing, finance, engineering management, computer science, or law, with an MBA preferred. Candidates with a tech-company background are especially relevant, and a law specialization in international business is also valued.

This role calls for at least 12 years of experience in business development or strategic partnerships, including 8 or more years in management roles within multinational organizations. Experience in building partner ecosystems, handling international negotiations, managing cross-cultural relationships, and supporting global market expansion is essential.

Skills and Capabilities

The position requires strong capability in global business development, partnership lifecycle management, channel strategy, ecosystem building, GTM planning, international contract negotiation, project leadership, risk control, international trade awareness, and corporate strategy execution.

It also calls for advanced business judgment, global strategic thinking, executive-level relationship management, cross-cultural communication, resource coordination, leadership, decision-making, innovation, and the ability to influence senior stakeholders and external partners.

Performance Measures

Success in this role is typically evaluated through the number of new global partners acquired, partner revenue contribution, contract value from partnership projects, project success rate, international market growth, partner satisfaction, strategic alliances formed, joint solutions launched, partner renewal rate, global market coverage, and overall team performance.