Sr. Partner Marketing Manager

Description

Remote, US.

Backblaze (NASDAQ: BLZE) makes high-performance capacity storage for AI. The company was founded in 2007, grew on under $3 million of outside funding, and listed on the Nasdaq in 2021. It now manages more than five billion gigabytes for over 500K customers in 175+ countries, among them AI platforms, GPU clouds, businesses, developers, IT professionals, and individuals.

Partners are how Backblaze reaches the AI market, including GPU clouds, AI infrastructure vendors, data and AI platforms, and the events they attend together.

You will join the Partnerships & Ecosystem team and report to the VP of Marketing. Product Marketing, campaign leads, content and creative, demand generation, communications, and analyst relations support you as you connect corporate go-to-market work with what partners are doing. You work at a senior level, own your workload, and have collaborators around you.

Your job is to bring partner marketing up to the same structure, standards, and ambition as the rest of Marketing, so each partnership delivers more for Backblaze, the partner, and shared customers.

Responsibilities

• Build and run a rolling six-month partner marketing plan with the Partnerships team, prioritising AI partnerships.
• Set up shared calendars, clear intake paths, and a clear position on what Backblaze will and will not do, so teams stay aligned.
• Fold partner programs, launches, and campaigns into Marketing's wider planning alongside brand, product marketing, and demand generation.
• Adjust quickly as opportunities change.
• Lead the impact reporting cadence with the business intelligence team, pitched for audiences from the C-suite to team meetings.
• Adapt Product Marketing's core positioning for each partner's sellers, architects, and customers, including joint value propositions, partner narratives, and co-branded messaging that stays faithful to how Backblaze describes itself.
• Build kits, one-pagers, and sales plays for priority partner teams with Enablement and Partnerships.
• Create joint narratives, co-presented content, webinars, and thought leadership with leading AI names to position Backblaze as a storage leader for AI.
• Coordinate announcements with Communications, including the disclosure rules that apply to a public company.
• Work with the events team to push for Backblaze presence at AI-focused events where you can appear with strategic partners.
• With the content and creative team, produce co-branded reference architectures, joint case studies, customer references, and announcements that help customers decide.
• Work with DevRel and Sales Engineering on technical content and enablement. They supply the depth; you supply structure and promotion.
• Keep Backblaze's presence accurate and current on partner integration pages, directories, marketplace listings, co-branded assets, Powered By Backblaze materials, and documentation.
• Support analyst submissions for partner-validated architectures with the Analyst Relations team.

Requirements

• 7 to 10 years in B2B technology marketing, including 4+ years in partner, alliance, or ecosystem marketing at an infrastructure, cloud, data, or AI company.
• You have launched and run co-marketing with partners bigger than your own company and earned priority from their marketing teams.
• You can turn core product positioning into partner-specific narratives and write them yourself. Include samples.
• You understand cloud and object storage, S3-compatible APIs, and how AI and data pipelines use storage for training data, checkpoints, and inference, enough to work with Sales Engineers and partner architects.
• You have planned and run a presence at major industry conferences, ideally in the AI ecosystem.
• You can read pipeline and campaign data in Salesforce and in dashboards others build, and act on it.
• You set and keep your own priorities and use AI tools to increase output without lowering the bar.
• Strongly preferred: partner marketing experience at an AI cloud, AI infrastructure vendor, or data platform.
• Strongly preferred: experience with partner-hosted conferences and co-presented programming at GTC scale.
• Strongly preferred: public company experience, including work within disclosure rules for partner announcements.
• Strongly preferred: experience building partner marketing in a function that had no existing home.
• Strongly preferred: a record of producing technical proof, such as reference architectures, benchmark-backed content, and customer references.

Conditions

Location: Remote, US.

Travel: about 25%, mostly around major AI events and partner meetings.

Reports to: VP, Marketing.

Works with: Partnerships & Ecosystem, Product Marketing, Revenue Operations, Channel Marketing, Content and Creative, Demand Generation, Communications, and Analyst Relations.

Base pay range: $135,000 to $150,000. Pay ranges are shared for all US-based postings regardless of state and are set by function, level, and country. Final offers depend on factors such as candidate location, skills, depth of experience, and relevant licenses or credentials, and may fall outside this range.

Backblaze is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values diversity, equity, and inclusion across race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, socio-economic status, ability, veteran status, and education.

Benefits

• Healthcare for family, including dental and vision.
• Competitive compensation and a 401K.
• RSU grants for full-time employees and an ESPP.
• Flexible vacation policy.
• Maternity and paternity leave.
• A MacBook Pro for work, plus a generous stipend to personalise your workstation.
• Childcare bonus, for human children only.
• Fertility treatment and support.
• Learning and development program.
• Commuter benefits.
• Culture that supports a healthy work-life balance.