Head of OEM Alliances

The role of the Global Lead OEM Alliances at Canonical

Large OEM or Independent Hardware Vendor (IHV) brands - Dell, HPE, IBM, Lenovo, Ericsson, Cisco, Fujitsu and many more - are major partners for Canonical. These companies often build software-defined solutions which they take to market, and Ubuntu is a key ingredient in cloud-native and edge or IoT solutions. More and more of those solutions depend on open source. Canonical Ubuntu is the best platform for rapid open source innovation.

The Global Lead OEM Alliances is responsible for IHV partner success - we want them to thrive and grow their business with Canonical software, solutions and services. This is a leadership role, responsible for strategic IHV Alliances worldwide.

Reporting to the VP Global Alliances, our IHV Alliance Sales Director will work closely with strategic partners across their complex organizations to engage with their innovation teams and ensure that they consider and integrate Ubuntu stacks and solutions. For example, private clouds, container solutions, and vertical solutions for industries like telco and automotive, are increasingly built on open source and Ubuntu. We are the challenger platform, but we are growing quickly in the industry.

The OEM Director is responsible to build trusted relationships with IHV partners, increase Canonical market share and attach rate, evangelize the partnership and lead all business interactions from engineer to CxO. He/she will often run customer workshops focused on particular initiatives at that customer, attend sales events, give public presentations and lead executive engagements.

Location: This role can be based remotely in the EMEA or Americas region

What your day will look like

• Build strategic relationships with IHV partners at levels
• Grow their awareness of open source capabilities on Canonical Ubuntu
• Demonstrate a deep understanding of the Linux and cloud software ecosystem
• Negotiate contracts and commercial business terms
• Demonstrate a deep understanding of large and complex organizations
• Lead partnerships with global accounts such as IBM, Samsung, DellEMC, HPE, Nokia etc.
• Work closely with marketing, sales engineering and product management
• Deliver on targets, objectives and provide a voice of the partner
• Lead executive interlocks between IHV and Canonical leadership
• Travel regularly - sometimes internationally - to drive partnerships in person
  

What we are looking for in you

• Experience in alliance or indirect sales management roles
• Autonomous, disciplined, hands-on, get-it-done mentality
• Ability to capture customer requirements, evaluate gaps, identify and create opportunities
• Passionate about Ubuntu products and mission
• Comfortable in fast-paced and high pressure environments with measurable goals
• Experience with Linux, virtualization, containers, and other cloud technologies.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills