Partner Portfolio Lead Architect

About the Role

Echelon is seeking a Partner Portfolio Lead Architect to join its team in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This full-time role reports to the Head of Partner Strategy and is responsible for leading the decision-making process regarding which partners are integrated into Echelon’s portfolio and under what terms. The role involves evaluating potential partners against key criteria and collaborating with various internal teams to finalize agreements.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the assessment of potential partners based on technology, industry, layer within the stack, and mutual fit, presenting recommendations to the leadership team.
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to evaluate candidates' architecture, maturity, security, and deployability, including required engineering effort.
• Validate industry demand, sectors, use cases, and accounts with account teams prior to commitment.
• Determine the partner's position in the technology stack and assess if that layer requires filling, strengthening, or should remain open.
• Evaluate strategic intent, commercial ambition, operational methods, and appetite for joint investment to ensure mutual commitment.
• Assess each new partner's addition relative to the company roadmap and existing partners, identifying gaps, overlaps, or competition to ensure a cohesive market offering.
• Recommend partnership models and negotiate terms, including go-to-market strategies, delivery, revenue share, exclusivity, liabilities, and exit clauses, with leadership, Legal, Finance, and business units.
• Develop partner profiles, assessment frameworks, recruitment processes, and the operating model for partner transitions in collaboration with leadership and Partner Sourcing and Intelligence.

Required Qualifications and Skills

• Experience in assessing, structuring, and signing partnerships at a technology vendor, integrator, or in corporate development or consulting.
• Ability to engage engineers on architecture, integration, and deployment, and to discern robust technology from demonstrations.
• Deep understanding of how sectors acquire and utilize technology, with the ability to judge where value will be created.
• Experience in designing channel/partnership models and negotiating revenue share or terms with larger counterparties.
• Credibility with founders, engineers, Legal, and Finance, with the ability to assess how partners contribute to the overall portfolio.
• Strong communication skills to simplify complex systems and articulate the value of work.
• Comfortable progressing with partial data and in ambiguous environments.
• Ability to test claims against data and explain decisions.

Advantageous Experience

• Experience within a technology vendor’s partner organization or a cloud provider’s ecosystem team.
• Exposure to venture investment, M&A, or joint ventures, including diligence and documentation.
• Depth of knowledge in sectors where Echelon operates, such as government, energy, financial services, and healthcare.

Work Environment and Values

This role is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with limited travel. Echelon values a customer-first approach, ownership mentality, clear communication, comfort with ambiguity, and a long-term building perspective. The company fosters an environment of curiosity, speed, rigor, confidence balanced with humility, autonomy, resourcefulness, and situational leadership. The use of AI tools for research, assessment, and negotiation is integral to the work process.

Compensation

The compensation package includes a base salary, housing, transport, and education allowances, medical cover, and equity through the employee equity program. Full terms will be shared at the offer stage.