Partnerships Director (North America)

About the role

Kraken is seeking a Partnerships Director to lead and scale Kraken’s partnerships strategy across North America. This role plays a pivotal role in shaping Kraken’s market-leading proposition for direct manufacturer integrations, expanding our ecosystem partnerships, and ensuring we continue to deliver exceptional value for partners, clients, and end customers.

What You’ll Do

• Define, execute and evolve our North America partnership strategy across DER manufacturers and the wider energy ecosystem.
• Build and maintain strategic relationships with leading low-carbon technology manufacturers, complementary software providers, and ecosystem partners.
• Own and evolve Kraken’s manufacturer integration proposition in North America, ensuring Kraken maintains a market-leading offering.
• Identify, evaluate, and prioritize new partnership opportunities that support Kraken’s commercial and product strategy.
• Manage inbound partnership opportunities and maintain a strong pipeline of prospective partners.
• Lead commercial negotiations and partnership agreements with prospective partners, working closely with legal and commercial stakeholders.
• Work closely with and support the sales team to understand prospective client needs and provide insight into existing and planned partnerships.
• Facilitate early technical and commercial engagement with partners, proactively identifying implementation risks and driving scalable, standardised integration approaches.
• Provide commercial insights and input into the integrations product roadmap, joining regular cross-team ceremonies and providing input on the partnerships pipeline.
• Work cross-functionally with product, integrations, engineering, and delivery teams to support partner onboarding and successful implementation.
• Maintain strong ongoing relationships with existing partners, including governance, contract management, and performance reviews.
• Maintain a close relationship with Delivery and Kraken clients to understand their partnership needs, synthesise against existing or prospective partner capabilities, and put forward recommendations.
• Develop and maintain externally facing documentation on our existing partner ecosystem for Kraken North America clients.
• Work with Kraken North America clients to ensure any partner contractual conditions are understood and adhered to.
• Represent Kraken externally across the North American energy ecosystem, including at industry events, conferences, and partner engagements.

What You'll Need

• Significant experience building and managing strategic partnerships, ideally within energy, software, climate tech, or adjacent industries.
• Experience working cross-functionally across commercial, technical, product, and delivery organisations.
• Comfortable working across international teams and time zones.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience negotiating and managing complex partnership agreements.
• Strong communication and presentation skills, both written and verbal.
• Strategic thinker with strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Excellent relationship-building skills, with the ability to influence and engage stakeholders at all levels internally and externally.
• Able to operate effectively in a fast-paced, evolving environment while managing multiple priorities.
• Able to travel to visit partners and attend conferences and client meetings.
• Passion for accelerating the energy transition and building innovative technology partnerships.

Qualifications

Studies have shown that some groups of people, like women, are less likely to apply to a role unless they meet 100% of the job requirements. Whoever you are, if you like one of our jobs, we encourage you to apply as you might just be the candidate we hire. Across Kraken, we're looking for genuinely decent people who are honest and empathetic. Our people are our strongest asset and the unique skills and perspectives people bring to the team are the driving force of our success. As an equal opportunity employer, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attribute. Our commitment is to provide equal opportunities, an inclusive work environment, and fairness for everyone. We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans.