--- title: 'Global Partner Lead at Benchling' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/global-partner-lead-benchling-san-francisco-dntz4gs8w7nt' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-10' --- # Global Partner Lead at Benchling - **Company:** Benchling - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-09-02 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/benchling/f337aee2-12a5-49f6-bc48-8aef1acace51 ## Job description We are rebuilding biotech for the AI era. When a breakthrough is delayed, the world waits. Getting a molecule from discovery to patients, or a crop from lab to field, involves thousands of slow, manual, disconnected steps. AI has the potential to change this, compressing decades of R&D work into years. But that only happens when clean, structured scientific data and AI are built into how science gets done. Benchling is the AI platform for biotech R&D. Scientists use Benchling to design experiments, capture structured data, and run AI agents and models directly in their workflows. Over 200,000 scientists around the world trust Benchling to power their most important work, from academic labs to Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma. We’re building an AI scientist for our customers. We can’t do that if we haven’t built the muscle ourselves. AI fluency is the foundation we build on; it's core to how we work, and we're committed to helping every new hire integrate it into their day-to-day. As part of our interview process, you'll complete a brief AI-focused exercise or discussion so we can understand how you think about and use AI to drive impact in your role. Feel free to reference any tools, platforms, or workflows you use today. ## ROLE OVERVIEW The Global Partner Lead (GPL) owns the global strategy and success of a named portfolio of Global Systems Integrator (GSI) partnerships. This is a strategic and hands-on role for a partnerships leader who can set direction at the executive level while staying close enough to the day-to-day relationship to drive real pipeline and revenue outcomes. Each GPL is assigned a set of named GSI partners and is fully responsible and accountable for establishing, onboarding, and scaling those partnerships against goals set in collaboration with the Head of GTM Partnerships. GPLs also work closely with their Regional Partner Lead (RPL) counterparts to ensure the global strategy translates into effective regional execution. ## RESPONSIBILITIES Named GSI Partner Ownership (~80% of time) - Serve as the global executive owner for a named portfolio of GSI partners — fully responsible and accountable for establishing, onboarding, and ensuring the success of each partnership - Set global partner-level strategy, joint business plans, goals, and expectations for each named partner, and track progress against those goals on a regular cadence - Segment and prioritize named partners within the portfolio, establishing an investment framework that reflects each partner's stage, strategic value, and growth potential - Allocate GTM, technical, and executive resources across the named partner portfolio based on where they will have the highest impact - Build and maintain executive-level relationships with partner-side leadership across sales, delivery, and alliances functions, engaging customer-side executives as needed - Adjust strategy and plans as needed based on partner performance and market feedback - Partner with Regional Partner Lead(s) to translate global strategy into regional plans, ensuring alignment and consistent execution across regions - Drive co-selling, joint go-to-market, enablement, and pipeline-generation programs with named partners - Establish a strong operating cadence with named partners — business reviews, governance models, pipeline tracking, executive updates, and escalation management - Enable partner organizations through training, readiness programs, certifications, and solution alignment to build and strengthen the company's practice within each named GSI - Support development of repeatable joint solution offerings, implementation motions, and industry-specific use cases with partner delivery teams - Represent the company in executive and customer-facing engagements alongside partner stakeholders, including partner briefings, QBRs, joint customer pursuits, and relevant industry events Ecosystem Expansion (~20% of time) - Assess and – where appropriate and as directed by the Head of GTM Partnerships – establish new partnerships with other strategic GTM partner types (e.g., hyperscalers, data/lake platforms, foundation model/AI labs, lab instrument providers) - Feed market and competitive intelligence back into overall partner strategy Cross-Functional Leadership - Partner closely with internal teams — including Sales, Professional Services, Customer Success, Legal, Finance, Product, Engineering, and Marketing, and more as needed — to ensure partner strategy supports company-wide GTM goals - Build repeatable frameworks, playbooks, and enablement materials that regional teams can leverage ## QUALIFICATIONS - 10+ years of experience in partnerships, alliances, channel, or business development, including meaningful experience managing large, complex GSIs or similarly matrixed global partners - Experience in life sciences, biotech, or pharma required - Demonstrated ability to build and execute partner strategy at a global/enterprise scale - Track record of driving measurable partner-sourced or partner-influenced pipeline and revenue - Experience structuring and negotiating partnership agreements (e.g., joint business plans, MSAs) - Executive presence, with the ability to build trust and influence senior stakeholders — including CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, CSOs, Managing Partners, and other senior business leaders — internally, at partner organizations, and with customers as needed - Track record of influencing cross-functional and partner-side stakeholders without direct authority - Strong understanding of how large consulting and transformation organizations operate globally — practice structures, incentive models, and delivery organizations - Technical and product fluency, with the ability to engage credibly with technical, delivery, and architecture stakeholders without needing to be hands-on technical - Strong program-management and cross-functional collaboration skills - Comfort operating in ambiguity and building process where none exists yet - Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience; MBA a plus ## HOW WE WORK We offer a flexible hybrid work arrangement that prioritizes in-office collaboration. Employees are expected to be on-site 3 days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday). #LI-Hybrid #BI-Hybrid Benchling welcomes everyone. We believe diversity enriches our team so we hire people with a wide range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences. We are an equal opportunity employer. That means we don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We also consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including but not limited to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. ## About Benchling ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Benchling provides a cloud-based platform for biotechnology research and development, uniting data, automation, and AI to accelerate scientific discovery. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series F) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2012 - **Founders**: Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashu Singhal ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: Life Sciences Software, Biotechnology R&D, Scientific Cloud Computing - **Target customers**: B2B; biopharma companies (including more than half of the world's top 50), academic labs, agritech, and industrial biotech organizations. - **Mission or purpose statement**: "To unlock the power of biotechnology" by helping scientists unite data, automation, and AI to bring new products and discoveries to life faster. ## Products & Services - **Benchling Platform (R&D Cloud)**: A unified, cloud-based platform for biotech R&D. It includes an electronic lab notebook (ELN), laboratory information management system (LIMS), and scientific data management. It allows teams to plan, record, and share experiments, automate workflows, and use AI tools. - **Benchling AI**: An integrated AI layer that includes "The AI Scientist," which connects predictive models, structured data, and wet lab execution into a single loop. It designs experiments, routes lab automation, captures results, and recommends next steps. - **Developer Platform**: An open, flexible platform with APIs, app integrations, and a custom interface designer, allowing organizations to build custom apps and connect data from instruments and other software. - **Services & Support**: Implementation, advisory, and support services from a team of experts. Also offers "Benchling Learning Labs" for team training and certification. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (last reported valuation was $6.1 billion in 2021 after a Series F round). - **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$412M** across 8 rounds. Annual revenue is estimated at **$50M** (per LinkedIn). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Accel, Y Combinator, and others. Customers include Sanofi, Moderna, and more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma companies. - **Growth Signals**: Over 200,000 scientists use the platform; trusted by 1,300+ organizations; 642 employees with 2.2% YoY headcount growth; active job postings (49 open roles); LinkedIn follower growth of 28.4% year-over-year. ## Competitive Advantages - **Purpose-built for biology**: Unlike generic software, Benchling is built specifically for complex life sciences R&D, modeling data for biomolecules, cell lines, and more. - **AI-native platform**: AI is embedded at every step, with "The AI Scientist" closing the loop between experiment design, execution, and data capture. - **Network effects**: Over 200,000 scientists and 1,300+ organizations use the platform, creating a strong ecosystem and data network effect. - **Deep industry penetration**: Trusted by more than half of the world's top 50 biopharma companies, providing a strong moat against competitors. - **Open and flexible**: Offers APIs, integrations, and a custom interface designer, allowing it to adapt to diverse scientific workflows. ## Strategic Focus - **AI-first R&D**: Deeply integrating AI agents and models into the scientific workflow to compress decades of R&D into years. - **Platform expansion**: Continuing to build out the "AI Scientist" capability and expanding the developer platform for custom applications. - **Customer growth**: Deepening relationships with existing enterprise customers (top 50 biopharma) while expanding into adjacent fields like agritech and industrial biotech. - **International presence**: Operating in 15 countries, including Switzerland, UK, France, Denmark, and Canada, with continued global expansion. ## Why Work Here - **Mission-driven work**: Employees directly contribute to accelerating breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture, and materials science. - **Culture of curiosity**: The company emphasizes a growth mindset, continuous learning, and treating mistakes as opportunities to reflect and grow. - **Strong benefits**: Includes dedicated mental health benefits (therapy sessions), monthly wellness stipend, winter holiday shutdown, and active employee resource groups (ERGs) with executive sponsorship. - **Community and connection**: Regular social hours, themed all-hands meetings, cross-functional events, and a strong emphasis on building community both in-person and virtually. - **Hybrid/Office policy**: Has offices in multiple locations (San Francisco, and international offices in Switzerland, UK, France, Denmark, Canada) with in-person social hours and team events. - **Engineering culture**: Nearly half the team comes from an R&D background, blending scientific and technological expertise. Open roles include Software Engineer (Agents, Developer Platform), Engineering Leader (Molecular Biology, Infrastructure), and more. ## Sources 1. [benchling.com](https://www.benchling.com/) 2. [benchling.com/about-us](https://www.benchling.com/about-us) 3. [benchling.com/careers](https://www.benchling.com/careers) 4. [benchling.com/life-at-benchling](https://www.benchling.com/life-at-benchling) 5. 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