At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you’ll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You’ll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that’s passionate about driving innovation and making a difference.
As a Partner Technical Lead, you act as the Chief Technical Architect for IBM’s Build Partner ecosystem. You help ISVs, Digital Solutions Providers, and Platform providers weave IBM’s DNA into their own tech stacks to co-create AI-powered solutions. IBM’s SaaS products - including watsonx.ai, watsonx Orchestrate, watsonx.data, Guardium, Instana, Apptio, DataStax, and HashiCorp – are available on AWS or IBM Cloud. You own the technical relationship end-to-end.
A day-in-the-life of this role may include, but not be limited to:
• Design embedded solutions that incorporate IBM SaaS products into partner offerings, identifying integration points, deployment models, and hosting strategies across AWS and IBM Cloud.
• Own the technical content of Joint Strategy Plans (JSPs) for assigned Build Partners, including current-state and target-state architectures, gap analyses, and product mappings.
• Lead discovery workshops with partner CPOs and CTOs to translate high-level requirements into actionable technical partnership roadmaps.
• Lead the three-phase engagement approach: internal discovery on partner history, partner discovery through reverse demos and architecture reviews, and executive briefings.
• Conduct Architecture Health Checks to ensure embedded IBM components perform optimally as the partner’s user base scales.
• Track SaaS consumption metrics and facilitate quarterly technical reviews to align partner product releases with IBM’s roadmap.
• Identify expansion opportunities by mapping additional IBM services to the partner’s evolving business needs.
• Document and present the partnership’s compounding value to executive stakeholders.
• Serve as the technical voice in executive briefings covering Voice of the Partner insights, State of the Union, and JSP initiation.
• Coordinate across IBM teams and delivery vendors to ensure coherent multi-party delivery models.
• High Level Experience years in solutions architecture, cloud architecture, or technical pre-sales, with 3+ years in a partner-facing or ecosystem role.
• Proven ability to design multi-product solution architectures for enterprise clients or partners.
• Domain knowledge across: AI/ML platforms, agentic AI and multi-agent orchestration, data lakehouse and database technologies, application observability, data security and compliance, infrastructure automation, and IT financial management.
• Experience leading technical discovery workshops and translating partner architectures into product mappings and go-to-market strategies.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures, Kubernetes, microservices, and SaaS deployment models.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to present to C-level executives and translate between technical and business audiences.
• A bias toward ownership - you drive engagements forward without waiting for direction.
• Working knowledge of IBM’s SaaS portfolio: watsonx.ai, watsonx Orchestrate, watsonx.data, Guardium, Instana, Apptio, DataStax, and HashiCorp.
• Functional knowledge of AWS and/or IBM Cloud platforms.
• Experience developing joint strategy plans or technical account plans with ISVs or Build Partners.
• Familiarity with AI/ML architectures including model training, inference, governance, agentic frameworks, and multi-agent orchestration.
• Experience in financial services, fintech, or regulated industries.
• IBM or AWS certifications.