Strategic Partnerships Manager

About Kalepa:

Insurance is a $7T global industry built on professional labor: underwriting, claims, pricing, operations, and distribution. Kalepa is building AI that can perform that work.

We create professional-grade AI systems for insurers: software that can read, reason, decide, and act inside real workflows and operate over long-time horizons. Kalepa begins by augmenting professionals with the tools to succeed at their jobs. That earns us the right to learn from real decisions, capture decision traces, and automate what can be automated successfully over time.

Our products are already in production with leading insurers, driving measurable outcomes and expanding across functions. The opportunity is far broader than any single workflow: to build the AI operating system for decision-making across insurance. For people who want to work on AI that matters, in a sector where correctness, trust, and real-world impact count, Kalepa is just getting started.

Kalepa is backed by leading investors such as IA Ventures and Inspired Capital, and our team brings experience from Meta, Palantir, Block, Affirm, Google, Amazon, McKinsey, Mastercard, and Uber.

Our Values (This is important):

Our culture is shaped by everyday decisions. Our values help us make them thoughtfully and consistently, especially when tradeoffs are difficult. We learn from mistakes so our good decisions outweigh our bad ones and their benefits compound over time.

• Excellence - We take pride in our craft and expect excellent outcomes in everything we do. We set high standards, verify our work, and own the result. We make deliberate tradeoffs, including rethinking an approach, redoing work, or investing more time.

• Pursuit of the Truth -   We seek the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. We question assumptions, give candid feedback, and change our minds when evidence warrants it. We work with customers to understand their challenges and what solving them requires.

• Ensuring Customer Success - We take responsibility for delivering results that matter to our customers. We measure success through improvements in their growth, profitability, and efficiency. We challenge our approach and customers’ requests when necessary, remaining accountable for the outcome.

• First Principles Thinking - We reason from a problem’s underlying facts, objectives, and constraints. We distinguish what is necessary from what is familiar and question assumptions that limit possible solutions. We test our reasoning against reality and address root causes with approaches that scale without unnecessary complexity.

In addition to our NY office, we have remote employees speaking 10+ languages across the globe. But we invest in bringing our people together both for regional meetups and global offsites (2021 - Playa Del Carmen | 2022 - Rome | 2023 - Buenos Aires | 2024 - Lisbon | 2025 - Cartagena | 2026 - Tbilisi).

Kalepa’s culture isn’t for everyone, and that’s ok. But for the people who are a fit, they can’t imagine working elsewhere. 

About the role: 

Base Salary:  $160K - $190K USD*

OTE:  $230K - $270K

As the Strategic Partnerships Manager for Kalpea you are tasked with building business partnerships with leading SI’s and tech partners that drive revenue and growth for Kalepa. You are the external advocate driving partners into our delivery ecosystem. Your goal is to ensure that our global partners, from Global System Integrators (GSI) to boutique insurance consultants, and technical partners have the mastery to speak intelligently about our capabilities and operational structure to implement Kalepa independently and successfully when hired. 

What you'll do: 

• Revenue Ownership & Partner-Led Growth: Own and deliver against a defined partner-sourced revenue target by leading co-sell strategy, joint business planning, and expansion across alliances, with forecast accountability.

• Ecosystem Delivery Strategy: Define the technical and operational requirements for our external partners. You will architect the "connective tissue" that allows partners to act as a seamless extension of our internal delivery teams

• Establish relationships with the Insurance ecosystem including but not limited to data partners, strategy firms, Policy Administration Systems, Pricing solutions, and other potential integration partners. .

• Partner Enablement & Certification: Build and manage the global "Kalepa Standard" for external implementations. You are responsible for the technical proficiency of our partners, ensuring they are enabled on our most advanced platform features.

• Operational Governance: Own the "Partner Scorecard." You will monitor partner-led implementation quality, stabilization speed, and client satisfaction to ensure our brand promise is met externally.

• Strategic Alliance Management: Serve as the primary operational lead for Tier-1 global partnerships. You will move these alliances from high-level agreements to active, high-performing co-delivery motions in the field.

• GTM & Product Bridge: Act as the technical voice of the ecosystem. Feed partner insights back to R&D to improve the "implementability" of our products and work with Sales to bake partner strategy into our largest enterprise pursuits.

About you:

• Experience: 5+ years in Strategic Partnerships or Channel Management within Insuretech or Insurance ecosystem.

• ​​Ecosystem Expert: You have a background managing technical delivery partners for a high-growth platform.

• Influence & Negotiation: Proven ability to navigate complex organizational structures and win over executive stakeholders

• Growth Mindset: A track record of taking a partnership program from idea to a predictable revenue engine.

• Insurance Literate: You understand the complexity of Carriers, Brokers, MGA’s and the insurance ecosystem and are well positioned to drive mutual wins and opportunities.

• Communication: Exceptional storytelling skills- you can take a complex technical product and make it a must-have for a partner’s own success.

• Travel: Ability to travel 20-30% to represent the company at industry events and lead face-to-face partner summits.

• Independent, adaptable and can thrive in a fast-paced environment

What you’ll get

• Competitive salary (based on experience level).

• Significant equity options package.

• 401(k) plan with employer match (regardless of employee contribution)

• Excellent benefits: 100% covered medical, 100% covered vision and dental for individuals and families, and others

• Work with an ambitious, smart, global, and fun team to transform a $7T global industry.

• 20 days of PTO a year

• Global team offsites (2021 - Playa del Carmen, 2022 - Rome, 2023 - Buenos Aires, 2024 - Lisbon, 2025 - Cartagena)

• Healthy living/gym stipend. Mobile phone bill stipend.

• Continuing education credits.

* The salary range listed is an estimate and will vary based on a variety of factors. Final compensation will be determined during the offer stage based on relevant experience, performance during the interview process, and geographic location, and may therefore differ from the posted range.