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Partner Manager, AI Ecosystems
apolloio • Remote, United States
Posted: September 8, 2026
Job Description
Apollo is one of the most-used data and go-to-market platforms inside the AI agent ecosystem — reachable today through Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and a growing list of agent and headless surfaces. That ecosystem is being rewritten in real time: MCP, skills, and plugins have opened entirely new surfaces for integration, collaboration, and partnership that didn't exist eighteen months ago, and what a "partnership" even means in this space is still being defined as foundation model capabilities evolve. This role owns that frontier for Apollo: deepening our relationships with the foundation model companies, agent harnesses, and AI-native platforms we already work with, and identifying the surfaces we're not yet part of.
What you'll do:
1. Own and Deepen Apollo's Frontier AI Partnerships
- Own Apollo's relationships with foundation model companies, agent harnesses, and AI-native platforms — both the ones Apollo already works with and the ones it doesn't yet
- Go deeper with existing platform relationships: more surface area, better placement, tighter integration, and a real seat at the table as their roadmaps evolve
- Continuously scan the landscape for new surfaces Apollo should be part of, and build the case for where to invest next
- Lead on partner review, certification, and compliance processes (e.g., app store/plugin submissions) and drive resolution when a partner's feedback loop stalls or lacks specifics.
- Drive monetization strategies within each partner surface — identifying where usage, credit consumption, or connector adoption can be grown, and building the plan to convert platform reach into revenue
2. Build the Next Generation of Apollo Surfaces
- Partner with platforms — and often multiple ISVs at once — to design and ship new plugins and skills that make Apollo genuinely useful to people running it headless, not just technically accessible via API
- Work with Apollo's own R&D team to translate what a partner's surface can support into what Apollo should actually build for it
- Treat every new surface (an MCP server, a skill, a plugin, an agent tool) as its own product decision: what it should do, who it's for, and how it gets discovered
3. Stay on the Frontier
- Track foundation model and agent-ecosystem developments as they happen — this category has no fixed playbook, and the right way to partner with it changes as model capabilities change
- Translate what's changing in the market into a point of view Apollo can act on before it becomes obvious
- Be the person internally who can explain, credibly, what's actually happening in this space and why it matters for Apollo's partnership strategy
Minimum Qualifications
- 5+ years in technology/API partnerships, developer relations, or a closely related technical partnerships role, ideally touching foundation model, agent, or AI-native platform ecosystems
- Genuine technical fluency: comfortable in API docs, MCP concepts, and integration architecture discussions with both a partner's engineering team and Apollo's own R&D
- Demonstrated ability to track and make sense of a fast-moving, still-forming category — you can explain what's changed in the last month and why it matters
- Comfortable working multi-party: coordinating a partnership that involves a platform and one or more other ISVs at the same time
- Experience working in a category with no established playbook — you build the process and the point of view as you go
Preferred Qualifications
- Existing relationships or experience with foundation model companies, agent harness platforms, or the broader AI-native/builder ecosystem
- Experience designing or shipping an MCP server, skill, or plugin — yours or a partner's
- Background in developer relations, technical partner management, or a product-adjacent partnerships role at a SaaS or platform company
Additional Content
Apollo is one of the most-used data and go-to-market platforms inside the AI agent ecosystem — reachable today through Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and a growing list of agent and headless surfaces. That ecosystem is being rewritten in real time: MCP, skills, and plugins have opened entirely new surfaces for integration, collaboration, and partnership that didn't exist eighteen months ago, and what a "partnership" even means in this space is still being defined as foundation model capabilities evolve. This role owns that frontier for Apollo: deepening our relationships with the foundation model companies, agent harnesses, and AI-native platforms we already work with, and identifying the surfaces we're not yet part of.
What you'll do:
1. Own and Deepen Apollo's Frontier AI Partnerships
- Own Apollo's relationships with foundation model companies, agent harnesses, and AI-native platforms — both the ones Apollo already works with and the ones it doesn't yet
- Go deeper with existing platform relationships: more surface area, better placement, tighter integration, and a real seat at the table as their roadmaps evolve
- Continuously scan the landscape for new surfaces Apollo should be part of, and build the case for where to invest next
- Lead on partner review, certification, and compliance processes (e.g., app store/plugin submissions) and drive resolution when a partner's feedback loop stalls or lacks specifics.
- Drive monetization strategies within each partner surface — identifying where usage, credit consumption, or connector adoption can be grown, and building the plan to convert platform reach into revenue
2. Build the Next Generation of Apollo Surfaces
- Partner with platforms — and often multiple ISVs at once — to design and ship new plugins and skills that make Apollo genuinely useful to people running it headless, not just technically accessible via API
- Work with Apollo's own R&D team to translate what a partner's surface can support into what Apollo should actually build for it
- Treat every new surface (an MCP server, a skill, a plugin, an agent tool) as its own product decision: what it should do, who it's for, and how it gets discovered
3. Stay on the Frontier
- Track foundation model and agent-ecosystem developments as they happen — this category has no fixed playbook, and the right way to partner with it changes as model capabilities change
- Translate what's changing in the market into a point of view Apollo can act on before it becomes obvious
- Be the person internally who can explain, credibly, what's actually happening in this space and why it matters for Apollo's partnership strategy
Minimum Qualifications
- 5+ years in technology/API partnerships, developer relations, or a closely related technical partnerships role, ideally touching foundation model, agent, or AI-native platform ecosystems
- Genuine technical fluency: comfortable in API docs, MCP concepts, and integration architecture discussions with both a partner's engineering team and Apollo's own R&D
- Demonstrated ability to track and make sense of a fast-moving, still-forming category — you can explain what's changed in the last month and why it matters
- Comfortable working multi-party: coordinating a partnership that involves a platform and one or more other ISVs at the same time
- Experience working in a category with no established playbook — you build the process and the point of view as you go
Preferred Qualifications
- Existing relationships or experience with foundation model companies, agent harness platforms, or the broader AI-native/builder ecosystem
- Experience designing or shipping an MCP server, skill, or plugin — yours or a partner's
- Background in developer relations, technical partner management, or a product-adjacent partnerships role at a SaaS or platform company