Engineering teams face an impossible reality: deliver more complex products faster, with fewer experts, and zero tolerance for failure. nTop changes how engineering gets done. Our technology collapses months of iteration into hours, letting teams explore thousands of variants instead of settling for the first option. Teams reduce development time by 50% and increase program win rates. Leaders choose nTop when failure isn't an option.
If you're motivated by solving tough engineering challenges alongside a team that learns and grows together, you'll thrive at nTop. We're seeking teammates who are eager to experiment, innovate, and make a meaningful impact with technology.
The Role
nTop has a set of technology partnerships in early development with cloud providers, AI and physics simulation platforms, and engineering software ecosystems. Conversations are underway, technical integrations have started, and there's genuine goodwill on both sides. What's been missing is a Director of Technology Partnerships, whose full-time job is to own this. It will require someone who builds before they manage, moves before they're ready, and finds that energizing rather than uncomfortable.
This is a GTM role that reports to the CRO, as we're measuring revenue and growth, not product delivery. Unlike most commercial roles, though, it demands real technical depth, in two senses. First, you need to understand nTop's computational design technology well enough to judge what a given integration is actually worth and what it would take to build. Second, you need to understand the market: the hard engineering industries nTop serves, their buyers, and what those buyers actually use and value. Knowing how a partner fits into that picture — or doesn't — is a core part of the job.
You'll work directly with CTOs, CPOs, and technical directors at partner organizations, not just their BD counterparts. Deals built on relationships alone, with no technical substance behind them, create more work than they save.
nTop has run an open partner model: API access is available, agreements are lightweight, the barrier to entry is low. What's missing is a structure that distinguishes partners by commitment — and gives the serious ones something serious in return. Building that structure is part of this role.
This is an IC role for now, with a clear opportunity to build something larger as the function matures. There is real backing in the meantime: the CTO and R&D on what nTop builds; field service engineering, a peer team under the CRO already testing integrations with customers; Legal for agreements; Marketing for co-sell. Strategy, ownership, and the number are yours.
What You'll Own
- Partner strategy. Decide which partners to pursue, in what order, and at what engineering investment — and defend those decisions against the opportunity cost of not building something else.
- Existing partnerships. Take the partnerships we already have — AWS, GCP, and Azure on the cloud side; NVIDIA, PhysicsX, and ANSYS on the software and AI side, among others — from early conversations to structured, revenue-generating relationships. Find and pursue new ones across cloud infrastructure, AI/ML platforms, physics simulation, PLM, digital thread, and adjacent ecosystems.
- Partner program. Turn nTop's partner program from an unmanaged list into a tiered structure. Define what each tier costs, requires, and earns: fees, agreements, co-marketing and co-selling obligations, support channels, SLOs. Make sure partners have the APIs, documentation, and product features they need to actually integrate.
- Commercial agreements. Pick the right deal shape for each partnership — co-sell, revenue share, OEM/embedded licensing, marketplace listings — then negotiate and close it with the partner and Legal.
- Product and engineering alignment. You're the bridge between what partners need and what nTop builds. You won't directly prioritize the engineering backlog, but the CTO and R&D partner with you on the integration roadmap.
- Sales and marketing alignment. Work with Sales and Marketing to turn partner integrations into co-sell motions Sales can actually run, joint messaging, and a clear story for customers.
- Partnership revenue. Track and report the pipeline and revenue partnerships generate. You own a blended number: sourced deals count at full value; influenced deals — where a partner relationship accelerated or expanded an opportunity owned by Sales — count at 40%. Attribution is tracked in CRM from first partner touch. You own the number from day one, but Year 1 quota is set to reflect a build year, not a mature pipeline.
- External relationships. Represent nTop with partners at both the technical and executive level, and own each relationship from first call to signed deal and beyond.
Required Experience
- Technical fluency in engineering software, simulation, AI/ML platforms, or adjacent ecosystems — enough to judge what an integration is worth on your own, and hold a real conversation with engineering and product at the partner.
- Experience designing or reconceiving a partner or developer program — and the instinct to distinguish partners who are serious from those who are just interested.
- A track record of turning partnership conversations into revenue: structuring deals, closing agreements, producing measurable outcomes. You understand how SaaS and platform businesses make money through partners, and can design deal structures that work for both sides.
- A career that combines meaningful hands-on technical or engineering experience with partnerships, business development, or a technical GTM role at a B2B technology company — and proof that you can work in build-out mode, where the playbook doesn't exist yet.
- The judgment to weigh a partnership's strategic and commercial value, engineering cost included — not just the upside — and the ability to work across Product and Engineering to deliver what each one needs.
- The ability to hold your own with CTOs, CPOs, and technical directors at partner organizations.
Preferred Experience
- Familiarity with the technical domain — broad (CAD, CAE, FEA, generative design, additive manufacturing, computational engineering) or specific (implicit geometry, simulation-driven design, physics-based AI). You don’t need to have built these tools, but you should understand them as a practitioner, builder, or go-to-market professional.
- Familiarity with the hard engineering industries nTop serves: aerospace, defense, propulsion, industrial energy, and adjacent markets. You understand what these customers buy, what they value, and how technology partners fit into their workflows.
- Prior employment at a company nTop partners with or wants to partner with: AWS, GCP, Azure, NVIDIA, PhysicsX, ANSYS, Siemens, Dassault Systèmes, Autodesk, or similar, with existing relationships at the partnership, product, or technical leadership level.
- Experience at a fast-growing B2B software company building out its ecosystem or going through a platform transition.
- Prior roles translating technical requirements between product/engineering teams and external partners.
- A career that moved from hands-on technical (engineering, software development, technical PM) toward strategic and commercial. You grew into a role like this; you weren't placed into one.
- Experience structuring or running a developer or technology partner program, including tiering, incentives, and documentation.
Success In This Role Looks Like
- Year 1: You're not starting from zero. nTop has existing relationships, technical headway, and a clear set of targets — the job is to organize and accelerate. By the end of the year: the existing partnerships are structured, with commercial terms set, integration roadmaps in place, and co-sell or co-marketing motions running. The first partner-attributed dollar is on the board. A defensible strategy exists, with a clear thesis for each partner and an honest view of which to deprioritize. At least one new partner has gone from first call to signed agreement.
- Year 2: Two or three anchor partnerships are generating material pipeline, with co-sell motions Sales can run without heavy lifting from you. The partner program is fully tiered, with the economics, obligations, and technical infrastructure to match — no longer an open list, but a real program. Product and Engineering are working from a partner-driven roadmap, not reacting to inbound.
- Long-term: Partnerships are a real, sizeable revenue line on their own. Across cloud, AI/ML, and simulation, nTop is the computational engineering platform ecosystem players want to integrate with.
- The real measure: The CRO and CTO credit this role with turning nTop's partner relationships into real business — not just logos on a website.
Compensation
The base pay range for this role is $170,000–$190,000, with on-target earnings at $220,000–$250,000 (upside uncapped). Variable compensation is tied directly to partnership-sourced and partnership-influenced revenue, not a discretionary bonus. Year 1 quota will be set collaboratively based on what's already in motion.