Partnerships Director in London

About Applied Computing

Applied Computing was founded in 2023 to build Orbital, a physics-informed foundation model for energy operations. We’re live across oil and gas, refineries, and petrochemicals, working towards our mission: sustainable abundance for a growing planet. The hydrocarbon industry keeps the world running. But its complexity has left operators tied to legacy systems, making critical decisions on less than 10% of available data. We built Orbital to change that. It’s a foundation model built specifically for energy that lets companies use AI at scale, harnessing all of their operational data and optimising in real time for any metric. Decisions get faster, operations get safer, and carbon intensity falls. We’ve raised over $32 million, including one of the largest seed rounds for an AI company in the UK. We’re just getting started.

The Role

We sell Orbital directly and through partners. The partners are the cloud platforms our customers already run on, the data platforms they already license, the technology vendors already in their plants, and the SIs who deliver their projects. Right now those relationships are early and there is little structure behind them. The Partners Lead gets deals out of them. You run the relationship with each partner that matters. You build a joint business plan, get the senior people on both sides talking, and set up the co-sell so a partner’s salespeople bring us into their accounts. You get Orbital onto the cloud marketplaces so a customer can buy it against the budget they already hold with Microsoft, AWS, or Google. You carry a number for partner-sourced and partner-influenced revenue.

The Person

You’ve run a partner or alliance function before and it brought in revenue you can name. Press releases don’t count. You know how hyperscaler co-sell works in practice. You’ve registered deals in the partner portals, worked the incentive programmes, and got a product listed on a cloud marketplace. You’re comfortable carrying a revenue number that depends on other people’s salesforces. You can sit with a partner’s VP and a customer’s procurement team in the same week and be useful to both. You know enough about chemicals, energy, and process plants to hold those conversations.

Essential Experience

• You’ve run a partner, alliance, or channel function and it produced revenue you can name.
• You’ve worked hyperscaler co-sell end to end: deal registration, partner portals, and marketplace listings.
• You’ve built joint business plans with large partners and held the partner side to them.
• You can carry and hit a partner-influenced revenue number.
• You hold your own in front of both partner executives and enterprise customers.

Nice to Haves

• Direct experience selling into or through chemicals, energy, refining, or petrochemicals.
• Existing relationships inside the hyperscaler, Databricks, or global SI partner teams.
• You’ve taken a cloud marketplace listing from nothing to transactable before.

Key Responsibilities

1. Own the partner portfolio
   Run the relationships across hyperscalers (Microsoft, AWS, Google), data and analytics platforms (Databricks, Seeq), industrial technology partners (Kongsberg Digital), and global SIs (EY, Capgemini, Wipro). Build a joint business plan with each partner that matters and review it with them on a set cadence. Keep the senior people on both sides in regular contact. Decide which partners get our time and which don’t.
2. Run the co-sell
   Build co-sell plays that put partners into our deals and us into theirs. Work with Commercial so partner activity comes through as registered pipeline, not goodwill. Get our salespeople and the partner’s salespeople onto the same named accounts.
3. Marketplaces and transactability
   Get Orbital listed and transactable on the Azure, AWS, and GCP marketplaces. Set us up on the partner co-sell platforms so deals can be registered and closed there. Learn how each partner’s programmes and portals work, and use the incentive structures.
4. Drive partner revenue
   Carry a partner-sourced and partner-influenced revenue target tied to the ARR plan. Build a go-to-market play for each partner, based on our customers’ industries and where in the sales cycle that partner actually helps. Report partner pipeline and revenue against target on a regular cadence.

What This Role Is Not

• Not channel admin. The portals and paperwork matter, but you’re here for revenue, not a clean registration log.
• Not direct sales. Direct deals sit with Commercial.
• Not partner marketing. Co-marketing campaigns aren’t your main output.
• Not relationship management for its own sake. A dinner that doesn’t move a deal isn’t the job.
• Not a desk job. You’ll travel to partners and customers regularly.

What Success Looks Like

1. Days 1-30
   You have a map of every partner relationship we hold, what state each is in, and which ones matter. You’ve met everyone here who deals with a partner today. You’ve agreed which partners to prioritise.
2. Days 30-90
   The priority partners have a joint business plan. At least one marketplace listing is in progress. The co-sell mechanics are agreed with Commercial and partner pipeline is being tracked.
3. Months 3-6
   We’re transactable on at least one cloud marketplace. A partner has sourced or influenced live pipeline. Joint business plans are being reviewed with partners, not sitting in a folder.
4. Months 6-12
   Partner-sourced and partner-influenced revenue is showing up against the ARR plan. More than one partner is bringing us into deals. The co-sell runs without you driving every step of it.

How We Work

44 people. Flat. Team leads run their own areas. High autonomy expected, low tolerance for process theatre. Decisions over debate.