Senior Director of AI Sign Translation Partnerships

Job Summary

The Senior Director of AI Sign Translation Partnerships identifies, prioritizes, and grows relationships across four distinct partner categories - Services, ISV, Hardware, and Channel - that together will carry AST’s technology into enterprise and government accounts.

This is a 0-to-1 role: much of this ecosystem does not yet exist at AST. You will build the target lists, make the first calls, run the early conversations, and turn the strongest relationships into structured pilots, referral agreements, and co-sell motions. You’ll work closely with the VP of GTM to translate partner activity into pipeline and, over time, build out a small partnerships team.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Partner Segmentation & Targeting: Build and maintain a prioritized target list of partners across four categories, informed by AST’s ideal customer profile and product roadmap.
• Category Coverage: Own outreach, relationship development, and pipeline for:
• Services — GSIs (e.g., Accenture, Deloitte), SI/RSI/industry specialists (e.g., Slalom), accessibility consultants (e.g., Deque, New Editions), media services (e.g., ASG, Tata Communications), and translation services (e.g., U.S. Translation)
• ISV — communications platforms (e.g., Zoom, Webex, Google Meet, Slack), LMS providers (e.g., Docebo, Blackboard), accessibility ISVs (e.g., accessiBe, AudioEye), media ISVs (e.g., Blackmagic, Grass Valley, Avid), and enterprise software platforms (e.g., Salesforce, ServiceNow, Oracle, SAP)
• Hardware — OEM hardware (e.g., Apple, Dell, HP), media hardware (e.g., DaVinci), and kiosk vendors (e.g., Nixdorf, NCR, Zebra, Micros)
• Channel — resellers/VARs (e.g., SHI, TD-Synnex), distributors (e.g., CDW, Carahsoft), hyperscalers (e.g., AWS, Google, Microsoft), and government contractors (e.g., GSA)
• Partner Development: Run structured discovery conversations with prospective partners, qualify fit, assess mutual value, and move the stro