To get the best candidate experience, please consider applying for a maximum of 3 roles within 12 months to ensure you are not duplicating efforts.
Job Category
Sales
Job Details
About Salesforce
Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. Here, ambition meets action. Tech meets trust. And innovation isn’t a buzzword — it’s a way of life. The world of work as we know it is changing and we're looking for Trailblazers who are passionate about bettering business and the world through AI, driving innovation, and keeping Salesforce's core values at the heart of it all.
Ready to level-up your career at the company leading workforce transformation in the agentic era? You’re in the right place! Agentforce is the future of AI, and you are the future of Salesforce.
Slack is the AI-powered platform for work, bringing every app, agent, and automation into a single interface where teams and digital teammates collaborate. We’re looking for an experienced Senior Business Development Manager to recruit, onboard, and manage strategic partners across Slack’s platform ecosystem. You’ll work at the intersection of product, partnerships, and commercial strategy—helping partners build on Slack while driving adoption against established partnership frameworks.
This is a high-visibility, individual contributor role on a centralized team that develops partnership initiatives aligned to Slack’s top platform and product priorities. The right person has strong commercial instincts, genuine curiosity about how platforms create value, and a bias toward building new things over managing the status quo.
Platform Ecosystem Growth
- Drive adoption of Slack’s platform among companies offering software products and services to businesses, with a focus on the AI agent, MCP, and automation ecosystems.
- Recruit and onboard strategic partners that extend Slack through integrations, connectors, workflows, and data connectivity—managing internal alignment and partner readiness throughout.
- Identify whitespace where platform gaps exist and develop partner-driven solutions to address them, including partnerships that enhance intelligent agent workflows and in-context AI capabilities.
- Develop mutually beneficial, trusting relationships with partners. Make Slack a favored company with which to partner.
AI & Agent Ecosystem Partnerships
- Recruit and manage partners across the AI and data stack—including LLM providers, agent platforms, analytics tools, and infrastructure enablers—into Slack’s ecosystem programs.
- Champion creative business models (capacity-based pricing, embedded experiences, ecosystem monetization) that unlock value for customers while ensuring mutual success for partners.
- Support the development of monetization and distribution models tailored for Slack’s MCP ecosystem, AgentExchange, and “Add to Slack” deployment pathways.
- Work cross-functionally with product, engineering, and legal teams to ensure partner solutions are technically sound, secure, and aligned to strategic priorities.
Partner Execution & Go-to-Market
- Own the partner engagement lifecycle: from opportunity identification and initial outreach through onboarding, activation, and GTM readiness.
- Navigate ambiguity, prioritize thoughtfully, and move quickly to bring new partners onto the platform in a rapidly evolving AI landscape.
- Execute go-to-market plans that demonstrate a compelling value proposition for both Slack and its partners.
- Ensure partner engagements are scalable and built for long-term success—your focus is on recruiting new partners and driving activation, not maintaining legacy relationships.
Cross-Functional Influence
- Partner with stakeholders across Slack product, platform engineering, AI, AppExchange, AgentExchange, and GTM teams to align on roadmap gaps and ecosystem leverage points.
- Understand and communicate market opportunities, trends, partner feedback, and competitive intelligence to cross-functional teams.
- Act as a thought leader on the AI partner landscape and what it means for Slack’s platform strategy.
- Contribute to strategy sessions, internal readouts, and investment cases with insight and clarity.
Requirements
- 7+ years in business development, strategic partnerships, or platform strategy—ideally in SaaS, AI, developer platforms, or cloud ecosystems.
- Proven experience recruiting partners into platform or ecosystem programs and managing those relationships through activation and scale.
- Strong product sensibility and comfort with the technical feasibility of partner integrations, including APIs, workflows, agents, and automation.
- Familiarity with generative AI, LLMs, MCP (Model Context Protocol), agent frameworks, and the broader AI infrastructure landscape.
- An entrepreneurial spirit with a record of sourcing, developing, and maintaining partner relationships in fast-moving markets.
- Strong commercial instincts combined with the ability to work effectively across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Exceptional presentation and communication skills, including business case development and partner storytelling.
- Ability to structure and analyze the quantitative impact of partnerships on the business.
- In-depth experience operating within and leading cross-functional teams (product, engineering, customer success, legal, finance, marketing).
- Passion about Slack, our platform, and the role of AI in transforming how teams work.
Nice to Have
- Background in product, customer support, or developer tool software partnerships.
- Experience with marketplace or app store business models.
- Prior work at a platform company or in a platform-adjacent BD role.
Unleash Your Potential
When you join Salesforce, you’ll be limitless in all areas of your life. Our benefits and resources support you to find balance and be your best, and our AI agents accelerate your impact so you can do your best. Together, we’ll bring the power of Agentforce to organizations of all sizes and deliver amazing experiences that customers love. Apply today to not only shape the future — but to redefine what’s possible — for yourself, for AI, and the world.
Accommodations
If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please submit a request via this Accommodations Request Form.
Please note that Salesforce uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help our recruiters assess and evaluate candidates’ resumes and qualifications throughout the recruiting process. Humans will always make any candidate selection and hiring decisions. Please see our Candidate Privacy Statement for more information about how we use your personal data and your rights, including with regard to use of AI tools and opt out options.
Posting Statement
Salesforce is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a policy of non-discrimination with all employees and applicants for employment. What does that mean exactly? It means that at Salesforce, we believe in equality for all. And we believe we can lead the path to equality in part by creating a workplace that’s inclusive, and free from discrimination. Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal. Any employee or potential employee will be assessed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications – without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, transgender status, age, disability, veteran or marital status, political viewpoint, or other classifications protected by law. This policy applies to current and prospective employees, no matter where they are in their Salesforce employment journey. It also applies to recruiting, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, assessment of job performance, discipline, termination, and everything in between. Recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions at Salesforce are fair and based on merit. The same goes for compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, reduction in workforce, recall, training, and education.
In the United States, compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, and benefits. Salesforce offers a variety of benefits to help you live well including: time off programs, medical, dental, vision, mental health support, paid parental leave, life and disability insurance, 401(k), and an employee stock purchasing program. More details about company benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.salesforcebenefits.com.Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Salesforce will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
At Salesforce, we believe in equitable compensation practices that reflect the dynamic nature of labor markets across various regions. The typical base salary range for this position is $172,500 - $260,100 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $207,800 - $285,800 annually. The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.