Director of Cloud Partnerships, Couchbase
Office located in San Jose, CA
Operational data platform for AI
Be an early applicant
Operational data platform for AI
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
Office located in San Jose, CA
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To simplify how organizations develop, deploy, and run modern applications wherever they are.
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 8+ years of experience in cloud alliances, business development, or partner management within the enterprise SaaS, ISV, or database technology sector
- CSP/Hyperscaler Expertise: Deep, verified track record navigating Cloud Solution Provider ecosystems, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP including their partner organizations, co-sell programs, and marketplaces
- Proven ARR Results: A history of successfully building programs and scaling cloud marketplace co-sell motions that delivered measurable multi-million-dollar ARR impact
- Domain Literacy: Foundational knowledge of modern cloud data architecture, NoSQL databases, cloud infrastructure, and the emerging GenAI landscape (e.g., Vector Databases, RAG architectures)
- Influence & Negotiation: Strong executive presence with the ability to influence cross-functional teams without direct authority and negotiate complex cloud commercial agreements
- Bridge Builder: Proven ability to build bridges between executives across sales, marketing, product, engineering, and partner teams — both inside Couchbase and within each cloud provider — to align priorities and drive joint outcomes
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, or a related field (MBA preferred, but equivalent real-world execution takes precedence)
- Studies show underrepresented talent is less likely to apply unless they meet all the criteria. We encourage you to apply if you’re excited about the role and can bring strong contributions to our team
What the job involves
- We are seeking a dynamic, strategic, and results-driven Director, Cloud Partnerships to lead our global hyperscaler alliance strategy
- In this high-impact role, you will own the end-to-end relationship, go-to-market (GTM) execution, and revenue generation with our Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) , Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- You will build out each partnership to grow consumption on their clouds, Marketplace transaction revenue and volume, co-sell execution, and co-innovation with their product teams
- This is a player-coach role: you will drive strategy and execution hands-on while growing the team, eventually hiring dedicated alliance leaders to cover each cloud provider individually
- Reporting to the VP of Strategic Partnerships, you will be the driving force behind aligning Couchbase Capella with the cloud ecosystems to accelerate co-sell motions, maximize cloud marketplace adoption, and achieve mutual ARR growth
- Drive GTM Strategy Across All Three Clouds: Act as the primary contact and operational point of contact for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP. Develop and execute a comprehensive global alliance business plan for each provider designed to accelerate Couchbase Capella adoption and grow consumption on their clouds
- Executive Partner Relationships: Build out executive relationships within each provider’s partner organization — spanning co-sell, partner programs, and marketplace teams — to secure sponsorship, funding, and preferred-partner positioning
- Product Co-Innovation & Integrations: Build relationships with and lead efforts on product innovation and integrations alongside each provider’s product and engineering teams, positioning Couchbase Capella data platform and AI Data plane on every cloud
- Sales & Marketing Collaboration: Build relationships across each provider’s sales and marketing organizations to expand co-sell and collaboration in the field, applying an industry lens to joint account targeting and vertical GTM plays
- Marketplace & Program Optimization: Own the commercial strategy for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Marketplace listings — growing Marketplace transaction revenue and volume, ensuring friction-free procurement, and leveraging customer cloud commitments (AWS EDP, Microsoft MACC, GCP commit agreements). Maximize Couchbase’s participation in each provider’s key programs (e.g., AWS ISV Accelerate and Marketplace CPPO, Microsoft ISV Success and Azure IP Co-Sell, Google Cloud Partner Advantage)
- Player-Coach Team Building: Operate hands-on as an individual contributor while building the function — grow the team over time and hire dedicated alliance leaders to cover each cloud provider individually
- Co-Sell Pipeline Generation: Partner with Couchbase Field Sales, Inside Sales, and Marketing to drive cloud-sourced and cloud-accelerated ARR pipeline through each provider’s co-sell motion and partner programs — registering and progressing opportunities via AWS ACE, Microsoft Partner Center (Azure IP Co-Sell), and Google Cloud Partner Advantage co-sell
- Industry Sales Team Alignment: Work directly with each provider’s industry and vertical sales teams to build joint account plans and land partner-sourced revenue. Educate and equip Couchbase regional sales teams on how to effectively "win together" with AWS, Azure, and GCP field reps and how to leverage each provider’s co-sell incentives and funding programs
- Joint Marketing & Events: Collaborate with Partner Marketing to execute joint marketing plans including demand-generation campaigns, executive sponsorships, and major partner events (e.g., AWS re:Invent, Microsoft Ignite, Google Cloud Next)
Our take
Critical functions for digital businesses such as computing and storage have become cheaper by orders of magnitude with the advent of cloud computing. However, these businesses still face the challenge of architecting their services under this paradigm. Couchbase’s NoSQL database is designed to help organizations build scalable, distributed systems that take advantage of cloud-native infrastructure.
The company's major bets on Kubernetes, mobile and NoSQL have paid off too. With many large enterprises now treating Couchbase as mission-critical infrastructure, a trajectory that culminated because of ts 2021 IPO. While it operates in a highly competitive database market, the company has continued to grow post-IPO and is now positioning itself around the next shift in enterprise architecture: AI-native applications.
The recent launch of Couchbase AI Services reflects an effort to unify operational data, vector search and model hosting within a single platform, reducing the complexity that often prevents generative AI and agent-based systems from moving beyond proof-of-concept. By embedding governance, validation and security controls directly into the data layer, Couchbase is aiming to make its database a core foundation for production AI workloads.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
16% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
May 2020
$105m
SERIES G
Mar 2016
$30m
SERIES F
Total funding: $251m
Company HQ
Cypress, San Jose, CA
Leadership
BJ Schaknowski
(CEO)Prior to joining Couchbase in 2025, BJ was the CEO of symplr. He also served as the Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Vertafore and as an SVP of Marketing, Sales & Services at LexisNexis Software Solutions.
Veronica Curran
(CPO)Veronica Previously founded Magnolia People Solutions where she served as a Managing Partner for nearly 2 years. Prior to that, she was the Chief People and culture Officer at SmartBear and the CPO at Alumni Ventures Group.
Gopi Duddi
(CTO)Gopi joined Couchbase in 2022 as an SVP of Engineering, moving into the role of CTO in 2025. Prior to this, he spent 10 years at Amazon AWS, joining in 2012 as a Senior Manager of Database Services before moving into the role of GM. He also spent 7 years at IBM In various Managerial roles.
Josh Harbert
(CMO)Josh is also the co-founder and President of SustainableIT.org. Previously, he served as the CMO at Delphix and the VP of Marketing at Tanium and Qumulo.
Amir Jafari
(CFO)Amir is also the CFO/Head of Finance & Operations at Blend. Previously, he served as the CFO at Plastiq and Reputation.com.
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