Partnerships Manager, Government and Public Sector

ABOUT US Sierra is the leading platform for customer-facing AI agents, working with many of the world's biggest brands — including The GAP, Rocket Mortgage, SoFi, Sutter Health, and SoftBank — to transform how they serve customers and grow their businesses. We are primarily an in-person company based in San Francisco, with growing offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. We are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and a commitment to balancing Family along the way. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do. Our co-founders are Bret Taylor https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettaylor/ and Clay Bavor https://www.linkedin.com/in/claybavor/. Bret currently serves as Board Chair of OpenAI. Previously, he was co-CEO of Salesforce (which had acquired the company he founded, Quip) and CTO of Facebook. Bret was also one of Google's earliest product managers and co-creator of Google Maps. Before founding Sierra, Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he most recently led Google Labs. Earlier, he started and led Google’s AR/VR effort, Project Starline, and Google Lens. Before that, Clay led the product and design teams for Google Workspace. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the end-to-end partnership strategy for Sierra’s US, Canada, and UK Government & SLED ecosystem, identifying, prioritizing, recruiting, and structuring the systems integrator, reseller, distributor, and strategic alliances that will most accelerate Sierra’s growth and expand our public-sector reach. - Build and lead joint go-to-market strategies with key partners, developing compelling joint value propositions, identifying priority accounts and use cases, and aligning sales motions, pipeline goals, and shared success metrics to drive measurable commercial outcomes. - Build a scalable partner program and enablement engine from the ground up, including training, certification paths, sales plays, field-facing materials, commercial frameworks, and onboarding programs that give partners the tools and confidence to effectively position, sell, and deliver Sierra. - Own and grow strategic partner relationships from initial engagement through long-term success, cultivating executive-level sponsorship while establishing the operating rhythms, joint planning, business reviews, governance, and scorecards needed to keep partnerships accountable, productive, and scaling over time. - Serve as the connective tissue between Sierra and the broader public-sector partner ecosystem, partnering closely with Sales, Marketing, Product, and Legal; bringing market intelligence and partner feedback back into Sierra; representing the company at key industry and procurement events; and using pipeline and performance data to determine where to invest, course-correct, or evolve our partnership strategy. WHAT YOU'LL BRING - 10+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, alliances, or channel strategy, with significant experience across US, Canada, and/or UK Government and SLED markets and a proven track record of building and scaling partner programs that drive engagement and pipeline. - Strong relationships across the government technology ecosystem, including resellers, systems integrators, distributors, and strategic partners such as Carahsoft, Deloitte, Accenture Federal Services, or comparable public-sector organizations. - Deep understanding of government procurement and public-sector requirements, including RFPs/RFIs, cooperative purchasing vehicles, GSA schedules, CCS/G-Cloud frameworks, Canadian procurement vehicles, and relevant compliance, security, and accessibility requirements. - Strong executive presence and relationship-building skills, with a demonstrated ability to earn senior-level trust and sponsorship while developing GTM frameworks, enablement programs, and operating cadences that scale partnerships. - AI fluency and a builder mindset, with experience leveraging AI-powered tools and insights in day-to-day work and applying that knowledge to partnerships around an AI-native product like Sierra, along with the ability to travel across the US, Canada, and UK as needed. EVEN BETTER... - Experience working at or partnering closely with government-focused organizations such as Carahsoft, Deloitte, or Accenture Federal, ideally within a high-growth enterprise company where you helped build and scale a public-sector partner ecosystem. - Experience structuring and growing strategic partnerships, including negotiating commercial terms, developing co-sell and governance frameworks, and driving joint GTM initiatives, customer events, executive engagement, and partner marketing programs. - Knowledge of the government technology landscape, ideally including CX/customer service technology, AI/ML applications and public-sector AI policy/procurement trends, with an existing security clearance or eligibility to obtain one where applicable. OUR VALUES - Trust: We build trust with our customers with our accountability, empathy, quality, and responsiveness. We build trust in AI by making it more accessible, safe, and useful. We build trust with each other by showing up for each other professionally and personally, creating an environment that enables all of us to do our best work. - Customer Obsession: We deeply understand our customers’ business goals and relentlessly focus on driving outcomes, not just technical milestones. Everyone at the company knows and spends time with our customers. When our customer is having an issue, we drop everything and fix it. - Craftsmanship: We get the details right, from the words on the page to the system architecture. We have good taste. When we notice something isn’t right, we take the time to fix it. We are proud of the products we produce. We continuously self-reflect to continuously self-improve. - Intensity: We know we don’t have the luxury of patien