Senior Ecosystem Sales Manager, Japan
About the role
About the Team
GitLab's APJ Ecosystem team builds and scales the partner (channel, alliance, and hyperscaler) motion across the region. Japan is a strategic market for GitLab, and this hire is central to strengthening our partner ecosystem there — deepening a smaller number of high-value partnerships rather than spreading thin across many transactional ones.
About the Role
The Ecosystem Sales Manager (ESM), Japan is a senior, market-facing role responsible for building and scaling GitLab's partner business in Japan across the full breadth of the ecosystem: hyperscalers, large Japan-centric system integrators (SIs), and born-in-the-cloud / AI-native partners. We are looking for someone with the range and seniority to credibly own strategic partner relationships across all of these partner types, and to help grow our business through these partners.
This is a senior individual-contributor role for someone who has already built a career scaling partner-sourced and influenced revenue in Japan — someone who knows the hyperscaler ecosystem (AWS & GCP), has deep, credible relationships with Japan's major SIs, and understands how to engage newer-generation cloud-native and AI partners as they become an increasingly important part of the go-to-market.
What You'll Do
- Build and scale GitLab's partner-sourced and influence business in Japan across hyperscalers, large Japan-centric SIs, and born-in-the-cloud/AI partners.
- Develop deep, strategic (not transactional) relationships with a focused set of priority partners — joint business plans, QBRs, and named executive sponsorship.
- Own hyperscaler relationship management and Marketplace motion with AWS and/OR GCP.
- Build and grow relationships with major Japan SIs (e.g., SoftBank, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NTT) and market-making channel/born-in-the-cloud partners and emerging AI-native partners.
- Drive partner-sourced pipeline and bookings, and carry a quota tied to partner-sourced/generated revenue.
- Partner closely with the Japan sales team to ensure partner-sourced opportunities are properly identified, supported, and closed.
- Work with the Japan and APJ Ecosystem team to help shape and refine the Japan Ecosystem coverage model.
- Contribute to partner enablement, certification, and go-to-market programs suited to the Japan market.
- Report on partner engagement health, pipeline contribution, and progress against strategic-p