Chainguard is the trusted source for open source. By delivering hardened, secure, and production-ready builds of all the open source software engineers and AI agents rely on, Chainguard helps organizations build faster, stay compliant, and eliminate risk.
Our customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and global industry leaders, including Anduril, Canva, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, OpenAI, Snap Inc., and Snowflake.
Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis VC, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Spark Capital.
The role, in a nutshell:
We’re looking for a highly motivated strategic partner/business development professional (VARs) who has strong market knowledge, a cloud and security network, and enjoys building relationships with key decision makers to evangelize building secure and reliable software. Our sales team walks a mile in their customers shoes and wants our customers and prospects to see the immense value and expertise Chainguard's solutions offer.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Own and deliver partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline and revenue outcomes across a portfolio of assigned VARs and Regional System Integrators, with clear accountability for contribution to overall bookings.
- Drive consistent pipeline creation through joint prospecting, partner-led opportunity identification, and co-selling motions with aligned field sales teams.
- Improve partner attach rates by enabling partners to position Chainguard as a core component of their security, cloud-native, and modernization offerings.
- Accelerate deal velocity and win rates by ensuring partners are effectively enabled, engaged early in the sales cycle, and aligned to customer use cases.
- Identify, recruit, and prioritize high-performing partners that demonstrate sustained investment in Chainguard through sales focus, technical enablement, and go-to-market execution.
- Execute joint business planning with partners, including pipeline targets, solution focus areas, enablement milestones, and marketing initiatives, and track progress through quarterly and annual business reviews.
- Drive measurable progress in partner readiness metrics, including certifications, solution validation, demo capability, and delivery confidence.
- Increase partner-driven demand generation impact through joint regional marketing campaigns, events, and field activities, with clear attribution to pipeline creation and opportunity progression.
- Maintain strong forecast accuracy and pipeline hygiene by managing partner opportunities in SFDC and related tools, ensuring visibility into sourced, influenced, and co-sell deals.
- Partner cross-functionally with sales, solution engineering, marketing, and partner operations to remove friction, improve execution efficiency, and scale partner success.
Required Skills / Experience:
- 5+ years of Software Channel Manager experience required.
- Experience working with and through VARs.
- Successful sales background required having carried and overachieved quota.
- Startup experience a plus.
- Entrepreneurial self-starter, who knows how to structure and breakdown ambiguous problems into executable steps.
- Strong verbal and written communication including high level of comfort with public speaking and excellent presentation skills.
- Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to build rapport with a variety of groups.
- Team player and ability to work independently.
- Strong technical aptitude.
- Data, metric-driven.
We live and breathe our company values:
- We are customer obsessed — We focus on delivering solutions to our customers that create value and make their lives better.
- We have a bias for intentional action — We prioritize, plan, try things, and fail fast.
- We don't take ourselves too seriously (but we do serious work) — We are solving an important problem which takes focus, but we also like to enjoy the journey.
- We trust each other and assume good intentions — We're transparent with decisions to empower team members to make well informed decisions.
A few of the benefits we offer:
- Flexible & Remote-First Culture: Work remotely with team meetup opportunities, bi-annual destination summits, and a monthly stipend for coworking spaces, phone and internet costs.
- Our Approach to Equity: Receive stock options upon hire and promotion. Plus, you can participate in secondary offerings and have 10 years to exercise your options (yes, you read that correctly: 10 years!).
- 100% Covered Health Insurance: We cover 100% of your health, vision and dental insurance premiums for you and your dependents. Nothing comes out of your paycheck.
- ∞ Flexible Time Off: Take the time you need – to do our best work, we need to recharge and reset.
- 18 Weeks Paid Parental Leave: We offer 18 weeks for birthing parents and 12 weeks for non-birthing parents, with the option to use it all at once or throughout your child's first year.
If your experience is close but doesn't fulfill all requirements, please apply. We're building the best team in technology and are focused on hiring "Chainguardians" with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.
Chainguard is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Chainguard will process your personal data in accordance with Chainguard's Global Candidate Privacy Notice.
©2026 Chainguard. All Rights Reserved.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of Software Channel Manager experience
- Experience working with and through VARs
- Successful sales background having carried and overachieved quota
- Strong verbal and written communication, including public speaking
- Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to build rapport
- Strong technical aptitude and data metric-driven
Chainguard Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Chainguard and has not been reviewed or approved by Chainguard.
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage is described as fully paid for employees and dependents, including medical, dental, and vision. This reduces out-of-pocket costs and materially elevates total compensation.
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Parental & Family Support — Parental leave policies and family-planning support (adoption, IVF, egg freezing, surrogacy) are presented as generous and flexible. This breadth supports different family needs and enhances perceived rewards beyond base pay.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Stock options are granted at hire and promotion with a long exercise window, improving flexibility and usability. This design can make equity more accessible and valuable over time.
Chainguard Insights
What We Do
Chainguard is the secure foundation for building with open source software. The company's portfolio of secure, minimal container images helps organizations embrace a new culture of software development where starting left with security, not shifting left, is the reality. Chainguard was founded by the industry's leading experts on software supply chain security, open source, software, and cloud-native development. We aren't a traditional security vendor. It's container images provide secure-by-default infrastructure that introduces zero friction to developer workflows. That's why developers love and CISOS trust Chainguard. Its customers include Fortune 500 enterprises and leading technology and security companies, including Anduril, Canva, Domino Data Lab, Checkmarx, HPE, GitLab, Snowflake, and Wiz. Chainguard is venture-backed by leading investors, including Amplify, IVP, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia, and Spark Capital.
Why Work With Us
Security is our mission, but having fun is our mantra. Since our founding, we've increased +1M memes, sung 900+ hours of Kubernetes-themed karaoke, and created 774+ whacky Slack emojis. Beyond this, Chainguard's innovation and leadership in open source and software supply chain security has been recognized by industry leaders.
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