Head of Cloud Partnerships

About Exa

We raised a $250M Series C to build the search engine for AIs. Led by a16z with existing investors Benchmark Lightspeed and YC doubling down the round brings Exas valuation to $2.2 billion. Read more

Exa is building a search engine for the AI era. Our Search API currently powers Agents Fortune 500s and AI labs as we transform an industry that hasnt been disrupted since the 90s. Were a largely SF-based team of 100 from Harvard MIT Meta Google Research ex-founders & dropouts alike.

We are rapidly building the most intelligent search engine in history. Were high agency low-ego and united by the feeling that this is one of the last problems worth getting right.

The role

The Head of Cloud Partnerships at Exa is focused on extracting maximum distribution from the highest-leverage infrastructure in the AI ecosystem. They own one of Exas most critical distribution layers: the hyperscaler clouds (AWS GCP Azure) and frontier model labs (OpenAI Anthropic and others). These partners are the infrastructure through which AI is built and deployed and Exas depth of integration here is a direct multiplier on revenue and reach.

Youll own the full relationship stack with each partner: from executive alignment and technical integrations to marketplace presence co-sell motions with their AEs and joint launches. Expect to operate with founder-level autonomy and a mandate to make Exa the gold standard partner across these channels..

What youll do

- Own the outcomes for your portfolio: depth of integration marketplace listings sourced and co-sold pipeline and revenue contribution against ambitious quarterly targets.

- Run the AWS partnership end-to-end: relationship management with PDMs and partner AEs AWS Marketplace listing and optimization co-sell activation field presence at AWS events and joint outbound with their field teams.

- Eventually scale hyperscaler motions with GCP and Azure: replicate and adapt the AWS playbook across their partner ecosystems marketplace programs and co-sell workflows.

- Own frontier lab partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic: joint solutioning with their applied and forward-deployed teams tool catalog and plugin listings (GPT store Claude tools etc.) integration QA and eval support and joint launches.

- Expand to additional frontier labs and AI platform partners as the ecosystem evolves.

- Drive co-marketing across the portfolio: joint launches blog posts demos and conference moments in lockstep with partner marketing teams.

- Bring the voice of the partner back into product: what their field is seeing what their customers are building whats about to change in their stack before we feel it ourselves.

Who You Are

- Youve owned cloud or platform partnerships end-to-end at a high-velocity company and can point to specific relationships you built and activated to measurable revenue outcomes.

- You have direct experience partnering with AWS: you know how their partner organization operates have navigated the co-sell motion and understand AWS Marketplace mechanics (ISV Accelerate PDM relationships APN co-sell).

- You can pick up technical concepts fast (APIs agent stacks retrieval eval workflows) and represent them confidently to partner field engineers FDEs and AEs.

- Youre comfortable in a high-velocity startup where the portfolio evolves quickly and prioritization decisions sit with you.

Nice to Have

- Broad experience across multiple hyperscaler platforms: GCP Partner Advantage Microsoft Azure Marketplace and familiarity with how their co-sell motions and partner incentive structures differ from AWS.

- Existing relationships inside OpenAI Anthropic or other frontier labs.

- Youve navigated marketplace listings and co-sell programs across more than one cloud platform and have a point of view on what makes listings actually convert.

This is an in-person opportunity in San Francisco. Were happy to sponsor international candidates (e.g. STEM OPT OPT H1B O1 E3). In addition to premium healthcare benefits (medical dental vision) we also offer fertility benefits and a monthly wellness stipend to all of our employees.

Required Experience:

Director