Partnerships Manager, Strategic Accounts

OPPORTUNITY StratusGrid helps Private Equity (PE) portfolio companies get more from their cloud infrastructure. We combine hands-on cloud optimization with our agentic platform, Stratusphere, to deliver real, measurable savings. This role is for someone who can own PE firm relationships, turn warm portfolio company (portco) introductions into closed deals, and manage the full sales cycle from first PE cadence meeting through contract signature. You'll work directly with PE operating partners, deal teams, and portco leadership, alongside our internal Customer Success and Operations teams. Our pipeline comes from PE firm partnerships, not cold outbound. You'll run cadence meetings with PE firms, manage multiple portco sales cycles simultaneously, and help customers solve real problems around cloud cost, infrastructure automation, and operational readiness. The savings are measurable, and PE sponsors expect portfolio-wide visibility into the impact. Portco leadership expects to see results they can tie to their bottom line. RESPONSIBILITIES • PE Firm Relationship Ownership: Be the primary StratusGrid contact for your PE firms. Build relationships with operating partners, deal teams, and C-level stakeholders. Keep them informed in recurring cadence meetings, present portfolio impact metrics, and drive adoption across the portfolio. • Portfolio Company Sales Execution: Run the full portco sales cycle from warm intro to signed contract: discovery, demo, proposal, negotiation, and close. You'll sell into buying committees that include portco CFOs, tech leadership, and PE investment teams. • Positioning & Deal Strategy: Tell the StratusGrid story in terms PE sponsors and portfolio operators actually care about: cloud savings, operational efficiency, and how it fits their value creation plan. • Pipeline Development & Expansion: Don't just wait for warm intros. Build relationships with new PE firms and develop pipeline within your PE portfolios through referrals, portfolio-to-portfolio introductions, and post-event follow-up. Look for expansion opportunities in existing engagements. • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with Customer Success on post-sale onboarding and escalations and with Operations on engineer onboarding and kickoffs, and feed competitive intel and feature requests back to Product. • PE Relationship Health & Reporting: Operations provides the data for PE readout meetings. You own the story, the relationship, and the follow-through. Track the leading indicators: cadence attendance, intro volume trends, and PE stakeholder feedback. • Execution with Reliability & Urgency: Own work end to end with a strong sense of responsibility. Capture commitments, hit deadlines, communicate status proactively, escalate early, and close the loop visibly to eliminate surprises. REQUIREMENTS • Partner and Direct Sales Experience: You've worked in a role where you managed partner or channel relationships and personally carried a quota and closed enterprise deals. This role is about selling through a strategic partner to reach end customers, so you need to have done both. • Enterprise Sales Execution: You've closed enterprise technology deals with multiple stakeholders involved. You can run a full sales cycle on your own without an SDR, SE team, or deal desk. You're comfortable managing a high volume of deals across multiple accounts at once. • Trust Built on Results: You earn the next introduction by making sure the last one delivered. You connect the right people, set the right expectations, and make sure both PE sponsors and portco teams see real value from the engagement. Pipeline follows. • Cloud & Infrastructure Knowledge: You know your way around cloud infrastructure, cost optimization, or FinOps. You don't need to be a cloud architect, but you need to hold your own talking cloud spend with a CFO without losing credibility with technical stakeholders. • Excellent Communication: Strong writer and communicator. You can take technical cloud concepts and turn them into a business story that lands with PE operating partners and portfolio leadership. • AI as a Daily Tool: Demonstrated habit of using AI tools to deliver high-quality work at high velocity while maintaining rigorous quality, security awareness, and sound judgment. • Travel: Willingness and ability to travel periodically for partner summits, customer kickoffs, and team planning sessions. • Remote-Work-Ready: Equipped to work effectively in a distributed team, including a reliable high-speed internet connection, a professional and distraction-limited workspace, and the ability to consistently communicate, collaborate, and execute independently. • Work Authorization: Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of hire. This position does not offer visa sponsorship. NICE-TO-HAVE / DIFFERENTIATORS • Sales or partnerships experience at a cloud provider, cloud systems integrator, or cloud technology consultancy. • Direct experience selling to or within PE-backed portfolio companies, with familiarity with PE buying dynamics: sponsor involvement in purchasing decisions, value creation plan alignment, accelerated deal timelines, and executive-level decision-making. • Experience managing complex named accounts with multiple buying centers (e.g., healthcare systems, franchise models, or multi-entity organizations), where one relationship generates many transactions. • Located in the Chattanooga, Nashville, Knoxville, or Atlanta metro area and able to come into the Chattanooga HQ office for coworking on a regular basis. BENEFITS At StratusGrid, we invest in the health, well-being, and growth of our team. We offer competitive pay and a flexible benefits package that supports employees and their families at every stage. Full-time employees receive: • Competitive salary • Medical, dental, and vision insurance • Life insurance and short-term and long-term disability coverage • 401(k) plan • Flexible PTO, paid sick leave, and paid holidays Benefits may vary by location and employment status. EQUAL OPPORTUNITY & FAIR CHANCE HIRING StratusGrid is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered in accordance with applicable laws, including the California Fair Chance Act. ACCOMMODATIONS StratusGrid is committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the hiring process. If you need an accommodation, please note it in your application or contact us through our website. ABOUT STRATUSGRID StratusGrid is building Stratusphere, a multi-agent platform that turns cloud complexity into measurable outcomes. Stratusphere coordinates specialized infrastructure agents to observe AWS and Azure environments, simulate policy-safe plans, and execute approved changes with auditability and rollback-ready safety, so savings compound over time, security improves, delivery accelerates, and teams spend less time on toil and fire drills. We're a team of builders and operators who care about trustworthy automation and real business impact. Our work sits at the intersection of cloud engineering, product, and customer outcomes, helping customers make infrastructure changes they can measure, explain, and stand behind. We'd love to meet you! #StratusGrid