Partner Portfolio Lead Architect

THE ROLE: THE RIGHT PARTNER, ON THE RIGHT TERMS Reporting to the Head of Partner Strategy, you lead the decision on which partners are brought into Echelon’s portfolio and under what terms. Each recommendation goes to the leadership team after you apply four key tests: technology, industry, layer, and mutual fit. You collaborate with the CRO’s technical principal and our engineers for technical diligence, tap account teams for customer insight, and leverage Partner Sourcing and Intelligence to challenge and enhance recommendations. Then, you agree on the partnership model, contract framework, and commercial terms with Legal, Finance and the business, before handing each signed partner to Partner Development for activation.   YOUR MANDATE: - The right technology: Collaborate with engineering leadership to assess candidates’ architecture, maturity, security, and deployability, considering engineering effort required. - The right industry: Validate industry demand with account teams—sectors, use cases, and accounts—before committing. - The right layer: Determine where the partner sits in the stack and if that layer needs filling, strengthening, or should remain open. - The right mutual fit: Assess strategic intent, commercial ambition, ways of working, and appetite for joint investment, ensuring mutual commitment. - A portfolio that holds: Evaluate each partner’s addition relative to our roadmap and signed partners, checking for gaps, overlaps, or competition, and ensuring a cohesive market offering. - The model and the terms: Recommend a partnership model, negotiate terms—go-to-market, delivery, revenue share, exclusivity, liabilities, and exit—with leadership, Legal, Finance, and the business. - Build the recruitment model: With leadership and Partner Sourcing and Intelligence, shape the partner profiles, assessment frameworks, recruitment process, and the operating model for smooth partner transition.   WHERE WE ALIGN AI AND TECHNOLOGY FIRST - Partnership record: Experience assessing, structuring, and signing partnerships at a technology vendor, integrator, or in corporate development or consulting. - Technical judgement: Comfortable engaging engineers on architecture, integration, and deployment; able to discern robust technology from demonstrations. - Industry sense: Deep understanding of how sectors buy and run technology, with an ability to judge where value will (and won’t) be created. - Commercial structuring: Designed channel/partnership models and negotiated revenue share or terms with larger counterparties. - Portfolio and fit judgement: Credibility with founders, engineers, Legal, and Finance; able to assess how partners add to the whole.   STRONG ADVANTAGE - Ecosystem background: Experience in a technology vendor’s partner organisation or a cloud provider’s ecosystem team. - Deal experience: Exposure to venture investment, M&A, or joint ventures, including diligence and documentation. - Sector knowledge: Depth in sectors where Echelon leads (government, energy, financial services, healthcare). - Arabic: Professional fluency in Arabic.   OUR VALUES - Customer first: Measured by customer outcomes; prioritise accordingly. - Ownership mentality: Own outcomes end-to-end; fix what breaks or stalls. - Clear communicator: Simplify complex systems; make the value of your work visible. - Comfortable with ambiguity: Progress with partial data and unclear environments. - Long-term builder: Invest in Echelon’s success; bring insight back to strategy and operations. - Builds others: Measure success by the people and capabilities you develop.   THE SEAT - Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Reports to: Head of Partner Strategy - Travel: Limited - Package: Base salary plus housing, transport, education allowances, medical cover, and equity through our employee equity programme. Full terms shared at offer stage.   HOW WE WORK You start from the problem, not the tool—and greet unclear briefs or broken environments with energy and a plan. - Curiosity: Always learning how work really happens on site and how the stack evolves. - Speed: Move quickly from brief to working result; don’t wait for perfect conditions. - Rigour: Test all claims against data; explain every decision. - Confidence & humility: Challenge and be challenged; change your view on evidence, without ego. - Autonomy: Make decisions and organise work with incomplete information. - Resourcefulness: Thrive with missing access, partial data, or unfamiliar organisations. - Situational leadership: Lead or follow as the moment calls for it. - A force multiplier: Your playbooks, reviews, and coaching make everyone faster. - AI-native depth: AI tools are integral to how you research, assess, and negotiate—testing technology, markets, and deals faster than others. - Where you are: A senior partnership builder, judging across technology, industry, and commerce—ready to shape Echelon’s partner portfolio and the model that supports it.