CIQ OVERVIEW
CIQ builds the enterprise infrastructure that powers the world's most demanding workloads. From the operating system layer through AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, and cloud-native orchestration, CIQ delivers the speed, security, scalability, and sovereignty that major enterprises, government agencies, and research institutions depend on.
CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux and the developer of the RLC Pro family of Enterprise Linux distributions, Fuzzball workload orchestration, Warewulf Pro cluster provisioning, and Ascender Pro automation. Our customers include some of the largest and most technically sophisticated organizations in the world, working across HPC, AI/ML, defense, and regulated industries.
We are a company of builders, operators, and open source practitioners. If you want to do work that matters, at a company that is genuinely changing how enterprise infrastructure gets built and run, we want to talk.
As Senior Channel Manager, you will own CIQ’s channel-led revenue as an individual contributor, reporting directly to the company’s sales leadership. You will build and run CIQ’s partner motion across three fronts: recruiting new channel partners, developing and enabling existing partners, and managing distributor relationships. Every partner activity ties back to sourced and influenced revenue. Additional responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Identify, qualify, and recruit new channel partners (resellers, VARs, SIs, MSPs) whose customer base and technical focus align with Rocky Linux, RLC, and the broader CIQ portfolio; build the recruitment pipeline, run outreach, and close partner agreements directly.
- Develop existing partners into producing partners through seller and SE enablement, joint business planning, co-marketing and demand-generation coordination, and accountability to mutually agreed targets; diagnose why partners are not selling and fix it.
- Own distributor relationships and economics, including transactional flow, margin, and incentive structures, and using distributor reach to extend partner recruitment without CIQ carrying all the overhead.
- Define and run the program mechanics: partner tiers, deal registration, the margin model, enablement, and the metrics that govern them.
- Work cross-functionally with direct sales (to manage channel conflict and run co-sell), marketing (partner demand generation), and product (to feed partner and market signal back).
- Carry and forecast a channel-sourced and influenced pipeline contribution.
Successful candidates will have:
- A genuine self-starter mindset, comfortable operating with ambiguity, and a near-blank slate.
- Strong commercial instincts, with the ability to negotiate partner economics and defend margin.
- Credibility with both partner executives and partner field reps.
- The discipline to run their book on numbers, not relationships alone.
- A hands-on operator’s approach, doing the work directly (outreach, partner conversations, enablement sessions, negotiations) rather than delegating it.
- A friendly, collaborative, humble, honest, and always striving to be better attitude.
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant work experience.
- 8+ years of experience in channel, partner, or alliances sales, ideally in infrastructure, open source, or enterprise software.
- A track record of personally building partner relationships that produced real revenue (not solely managing a team that did).
- Experience standing up or materially growing partner program mechanics: tiering, deal registration, margin models, and enablement.
BENEFITS
Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Flexible paid time off.
Employee stock options.
Remote work; no travel required for most positions.
Skills Required
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant work experience
- 8+ years of experience in channel, partner, or alliances sales
- Experience in infrastructure, open source, or enterprise software
- Demonstrated record of personally building partner relationships that generated revenue
- Experience establishing or materially growing partner program mechanics, including tiering, deal registration, margin models, and enablement
- Ability to negotiate partner economics and defend margins
- Experience with seller and sales engineer enablement, joint business planning, and co-marketing
What We Do
Empowering People To Do What They Do Great! At CIQ, we are here to help our customers and communities do amazing things! We are your escalation or development team. We are your infrastructure. We are your cloud. We are the people that will have your back, so you can do what you do great. Our Values Empowering Innovating software infrastructure solutions for extreme performance and scale including service models designed to meet the needs of your organization. Improving Our passion is to always do better. Always provide more value. Always drive intelligent innovation. Always provide what the customer & community needs. Growing CIQ believes in constant and never-ending growth. We are growing fast and looking for like-minded people with an unwavering passion for always doing better for ourselves and others. What do you get when you cross High Performance Computing with Enterprise, Cloud, and Hyper-scale? The Answer is CIQ. CIQ is composed of technology founders, innovators, engineers, some of the leading creators in the industry, and we all share the same vision: to help companies, teams, and individuals do amazing things. Open Source When we decide to open source a project, it is because we believe it would be best for the project and community. But open source is not a marketing gimmick nor a sales tool, and it should never be at the mercy of a corporate agenda. This is why we’ve given our open source initiatives properly to the community, and we strive to set the precedent such that other companies would do likewise. Always Customers First Our model is simple: We support people, not cores or sockets. People. Follow us on YouTube and Twitter: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQbKq1vIffqRAMUDPfHcU0w https://twitter.com/CtrlIQ?s=20&t=7pQXepSSimeTqytBY52Dhw
