Channel Sales Lead

Location: San Francisco; New York City Workplace: Hybrid As Channel Sales Lead at Perplexity, you’ll build and lead the channel sales function that help more organizations adopt Perplexity Computer and our API products. You’ll develop partners who bring us into new customer opportunities, help us sell and deploy effectively, and turn those relationships into measurable pipeline, revenue, and customer value. This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll recruit and activate partners, work directly on important deals, and build the programs and team that help us scale. You’ll work closely with Sales, Customer Success, Applied AI, Marketing, and Business Development to make the channel a repeatable source of enterprise pipeline and revenue. RESPONSIBILITIES - Set the enterprise channel strategy, prioritizing the partners and routes to market that can generate incremental business and help customers succeed - Recruit, develop, and activate a focused portfolio of partners, which may include resellers, systems integrators, consulting and implementation firms, technology partners, and cloud marketplaces - Own partner-sourced pipeline and revenue targets, and work with Sales on opportunities where partners help advance or expand a deal - Build joint business plans with priority partners, with clear customer segments, account plans, commitments, and measures of success - Work directly with partner sellers and Perplexity AEs on prospecting, qualification, customer meetings, and closing, staying involved until partnerships produce repeatable results - Establish the operating model for referrals, co-selling, and resale, including partner onboarding, deal registration, account ownership, and rules for resolving channel conflict - Structure and negotiate partner agreements with Finance and Legal, balancing partner incentives, customer experience, and the economics of each relationship - Partner with Applied AI, Enablement, and Customer Success to prepare partners to demonstrate, deploy, and support our products, with clear standards for delivery quality and customer handoffs - Work with Partner Marketing on joint campaigns, partner-facing materials, and field activation, connecting that work to qualified opportunities and revenue - Build the team as the channel grows, hiring, coaching, and developing channel sales managers while remaining personally involved in priority relationships - Run regular partner and pipeline reviews, and work with RevOps and Finance on forecasting, attribution, and reporting that distinguish sourced business from partner influence and avoid double counting - Bring partner and customer feedback into product and go-to-market planning, and adjust or exit partnerships that do not deliver meaningful results YOU MAY BE A GOOD FIT IF - You have 8+ years in channel sales, enterprise sales, or revenue-generating alliances at enterprise software companies, including direct responsibility for growing business through partners - You’ve built a partner program or opened a new partner-led route to market during rapid growth, not only managed an established set of relationships - You’ve owned partner pipeline and revenue targets and can explain how your work created incremental business - You have experience across more than one partner model and can judge when to use co-selling, referrals, resale, or services-led partnerships - You’ve recruited and activated partners, earning commitment from their leaders and helping their sellers and delivery teams become productive - You have experience hiring, coaching, or leading partner teams, and are comfortable doing the work directly while building the function - You understand enterprise sales cycles and can work effectively alongside AEs, technical teams, and executive buyers to move opportunities forward - You’re comfortable with partner economics and commercial negotiations, including incentives, margins, revenue sharing, and rules of engagement with direct sales - You use Salesforce and pipeline data to prioritize work, forecast outcomes, and hold partners and internal teams accountable - You’re hands-on with AI products and can build enough product fluency to identify useful customer workflows and earn trust with business and technical stakeholders - You’re comfortable operating without an established playbook, making focused bets and using evidence to decide what to scale