Director AI Ecosystem Partnerships

Location Details: USA Remote At GoDaddy the future of work looks different for each team. Some teams work in the office full-time, others have a hybrid arrangement (they work remotely some days and in the office some days) and some work entirely remotely. This position may be a hybrid or fully remote position, as decided by your manager. If designated as hybrid, you’ll divide your time between working remotely from your home and an office location, so you should live within commuting distance. If designated as remote, you’ll be working remotely from your home and may occasionally visit a GoDaddy office to meet with your team for events or meetings. Your hiring manager can share more about this role’s hybrid or remote designation. This position is not eligible to be performed in Alaska, Mississippi, North Dakota, or the Virgin Islands. GoDaddy is not currently considering candidates for this role in California, Seattle, or NYC. Join our team Help develop how AI agents establish trust GoDaddy’s Agent Name Service (ANS), our emerging open standard, crafted to give AI agents a trusted, interoperable identity across platforms and organizations. Exploring integrations and proof of concept, you’ll help turn growing interest into adoption. Build and scale the ANS partner ecosystem, owning the partnership pipeline from initial conversations through defined integrations, completed proof of concept and broader adoption. Partnering with C-level executives, product and engineering leaders, standards organizations and open-source communities to turn shared ambitions into clear plans and tangible results. This highly visible individual contributor role requires 15%-25% travel and offers the opportunity to work across GoDaddy and the wider technology ecosystem, bringing structure and momentum to our sophisticated portfolio of partnerships. If you combine business development experience with technical proficiency, scaling ecosystems and the ability to bring organizations together around shared outcomes, we encourage you to apply. What you'll get to do... • Own and advance our ANS partnership pipeline, converting strategic interest from priority partners into active integration programmes with clear use cases, commercial or strategic objectives, technical workstreams and delivery plans • Set landmarks, owners and timelines across GoDaddy and partner teams, identifying blockers early and bringing together the executive, commercial, product or technical support to resolve them • Establish a well-adapted, transparent operating model and repeatable playbooks that move partners from initial engagement through proof of concept, integration and public launch • Develop strategic partnerships and be the main contact for technology, telecommunications, security, identity and infrastructure partners, building trusted relationships with executives, business development, product and engineering teams • Lead executive meetings, presentations and partnership reviews, tailoring our ANS story to each partner’s priorities and opportunities • Coordinate executive sponsorship and call out issues where our senior leaders can accelerate partnership progress • Work with our product and engineering teams and partner collaborators to define use cases, agree technical requirements and coordinate proof of concept • Advance multiple partners through concept validation and integrations, towards production deployments, integrations and measurable adoption • Share lessons, technical patterns, reusable examples and partner materials that make ANS easier to adopt, building reference implementations and partner success stories that demonstrate its value • Support the open-standard ecosystem by representing GoDaddy at sector conferences, collaborative committees, and leadership panels, growing awareness of ANS and encouraging ecosystem participation with the Linux Foundation, establishing relationships with developers, open-source contributors, and standards leaders • Help shape governance, contribution and engagement models that establish ANS as a credible, increasingly adopted open standard for agent identity, ensuring partner feedback advises its roadmap and adoption strategy • Maintain a current, view of pipeline progress, opportunities, risks and next steps, documenting success from proofs of concept through integrations, launches and adoption. Communicate insights to our executives and cross-functional teams, turning recurring partner requirements and insights into input for product priorities and ecosystem strategy Your experience should include... • 10+ years in strategic partnerships business development/ecosystem development, owning sophisticated partnerships within a large global SaaS/technology organization. Experience building platform partnerships, technical integrations or developer ecosystems, and existing relationships across major cloud, software, telecommunications, security or infrastructure companies • A track record of taking partnerships from strategic discussion through technical validation and execution, with the technical proficiency to work with product, engineering, security and identity teams. Experience in AI agents, identity, cybersecurity, trust infrastructure, domains, DNS, cloud infrastructure or developer platforms • Executive presence and experience addressing and influencing C-level leaders, explaining sophisticated technical and strategic concepts clearly, and establishing accountability without direct organizational authority • Experience coordinating multiple workstreams across organizations with different priorities, decision processes and timelines. Work with open-source foundations, industry consortia or technical standards bodies, including familiarity with the Linux Foundation ecosystem and open-source governance • Confidence working in an emerging area where strategy, product and ecosystem are evolving together. Experience launching a new standard, platform, protocol