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Buzz Solutions builds PowerAI, a computer vision platform that detects hardware defects in utility transmission and distribution infrastructure and integrates findings into the systems utilities use for asset decisions. Customers include Dominion, AEP, NYPA, and Ameren. The company has validated direct sales and now seeks to scale through partnerships.
As Director of Partnerships, you will design and execute the go-to-market partner strategy and own the revenue it generates. Over 18–24 months, you will build a repeatable partner motion in the United States, open Canada as the first international market, and scope subsequent markets. You will define partnership categories and priorities, evaluate and sign partners, ensure technical viability, enable partner sellers and delivery teams, and be accountable for partner-sourced pipeline and closed ARR.
This role requires a hybrid skill set: you will negotiate commercial terms in the morning, walk integration architecture with partners' solutions teams in the afternoon, and run certification workshops for partner field engineers the following week. You will start as an individual contributor with an expected path to building a partner organization in year two.
Key responsibilities include:
**Pipeline and Revenue Through Partnership**: You carry a partner-sourced and partner-influenced revenue number. This is not a support function; you work opportunities alongside direct sellers and partner sellers from qualification through close, own the forecast, define rules of engagement and deal registration, and enforce margin structures that prevent channel conflict.
**Technical Integration and Joint Solutions Design**: You own the commercial and technical shape of how PowerAI integrates with partners' platforms and drives joint value. Priorities include formalizing the existing Esri integration into a listed alliance, doing the same for Maximo, and prioritizing subsequent integrations against real pipeline. You will also own the hyperscaler track—marketplace transactability and co-sell. You build reference architectures and joint solution briefs that enable partners' pre-sales teams to position the solution credibly without Buzz in the room. While not expected to write production code, you must hold your own discussing API orchestration, data flow, GIS conflation, and enterprise-scale integration failure modes, and know when to engage Product and Engineering.
**Partner Enablement and Certification**: You build the layer that converts signed agreements into revenue: sales narratives and objection handling partners can deliver independently, business case and ROI tooling for utility capital committees, demo certification for partner-led discovery, and technical curriculum for partner engineers to implement and support deployments. Over time this becomes a tiered certification program and services multiplier.
**International Market Entry**: You own how Buzz expands internationally and in what sequence. Expansion is partner-led by design, and sequencing judgment is integral to the role.
**Requirements**
- Built a partner ecosystem from near zero at an early-stage or scaling B2B software company (not inherited and grown a mature program); you've done the first agreement template, rules of engagement, and certification deck.
- Carried and hit a revenue number through partners; you can walk through specific partner-sourced pipeline and closed revenue you were personally accountable for, how it was measured, and quarters you missed as well as made.
- Sold into slow, regulated, procurement-heavy enterprises; utilities experience is a strong advantage; adjacent regulated infrastructure (energy, telecom, transportation, public sector) translates. Exclusive experience selling to fast-moving commercial buyers does not qualify.
- Technical fluency sufficient to be credible without an engineer in the room; you can explain data flow between capture providers, the platform, and customer GIS/EAM systems; spot where integrations fail at enterprise scale; distinguish demo integrations from supportable ones.
- Built sales and technical enablement material yourself—partner pitch narratives, ROI models, demo certification, delivery curriculum—written, not commissioned.
- Negotiated real partner commercial terms (referral, resell, white-label, OEM structures, margin and discount frameworks, deal registration, data rights, liability) in partnership with legal.
- Comfortable as an individual contributor in an ambiguous, resource-constrained environment; for the first year, you are the partner organization.
Note: Buzz Solutions does not provide sponsorship for work authorization in the United States at this time.
