Senior Manager, AI Partnership Marketing

Direct Platform
· Strategic Account Marketing Senior Manager, AI Partnership Marketing

Chicago, IL (Hybrid) – Full‑time.

Reports to:

Team Lead, Strategic Account Marketing (Dotted line to Global Head of AI Platform Strategy & Partnerships).

About the role:

Morningstar’s Direct Platform is building a dedicated AI Partnership Marketing function to protect, grow, and transform the business in the LLM and AI ecosystem. This is a foundational role—you will be the first marketer singularly focused on the partner ecosystem, responsible for designing the program from the ground up and scaling it through disciplined execution, AI‑powered workflows, and deep cross‑functional alignment.

You will own the strategy and activation of a tiered partner marketing program—building co‑marketing playbooks, enabling internal sales teams, and driving toward &1M in closed‑won partner‑sourced revenue in year one. You’ll operate at the intersection of product, sales, brand, and legal, serving as the primary marketing point of contact for all enrolled partners.

$1M closed‑won partner‑sourced revenue, ≤5 enrolled partners at program launch.

• Design and launch the tiered partner marketing program (Platinum / Gold / Silver), including intake criteria, upgrade paths, and tier‑specific marketing plans covering demand generation, media, product marketing, events, and brand.
• Serve as the primary marketing point of contact for all enrolled partners; lead kickoff meetings to align on brand rights, creative review SLAs, joint value propositions, and rules of engagement.
• Develop co‑branded campaign assets and a reusable design system with the creative team to enable rapid content production across partners.
• Build and maintain in‑platform brand guidelines defining Morningstar’s appearance inside partner ecosystems and off‑platform experiences.
• Execute go‑to‑market enablement plans for the sales team—including talk tracks, FAQs, one‑pagers, and joint sales plays—and track adoption via Gong and asset engagement metrics.
• Own partner‑sourced pipeline tracking and influence attribution; prepare quarterly business review materials to demonstrate ROI to internal leadership and partner stakeholders.
• Create targeted client education content (persona‑ and workflow‑specific) to bring AI capabilities down to advisors’ level of familiarity and comfort.
• Align with sales leadership and the Global Head of AI Platform Strategy on partner prioritization, tier assignments, and program enrollment decisions.
• Establish shared work spaces, communication cadences, and escalation paths with each partner to ensure smooth execution and accountability.
• Monitor and manage the demand‑generation activation budget, tracking spend against pipeline and revenue outcomes.
• Identify operational risks (e.g., over‑expansion, contractual ambiguity, brand control gaps) and proactively build processes to mitigate them.

• 6+ years in B2B marketing with at least 2 years in partnership, channel, or alliance marketing at a SaaS or data/technology company.
• Demonstrated experience building or managing a tiered partner program, including co‑marketing execution, enablement, and performance reporting.
• Strong understanding of the LLM and AI platform ecosystem; familiarity with partner marketplace dynamics and co‑sell motions.
• Fluency in demand‑generation channels—paid search, display, social, email, webinars, and events—with the ability to build campaigns across all of them.
• Experience with marketing attribution modeling and CRM hygiene (Salesforce), including pipeline tagging for partner‑sourced and partner‑influenced deals.
• Excellent cross‑functional instincts and project management skills; able to run multiple partner work streams simultaneously.
• Experience developing client‑facing education content for non‑technical audiences—translating complex technology into workflow‑level clarity.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity at the early stages of a program build, with the discipline to create repeatable processes from scratch.
• Nice to have:
  Prior experience at a fintech, financial data, or investment management company; familiarity with co‑sell programs at dominant AI…