Academic Partnerships Manager

Job Description

QNX enhances the human experience and amplifies technology-driven industries, providing a trusted foundation for software-defined businesses to thrive. The business leads the way in delivering safe and secure operating systems, hypervisors, middleware, solutions, and development tools, along with support and services delivered by trusted embedded software experts. With a focus on reducing hardware dependency and increasing efficiency, QNX empowers organizations to unlock new possibilities in areas like high-performance computing at the edge, standards-based virtualization technologies, and cloud enablement.

QNX® technology has been deployed in the world’s most critical embedded systems, including more than 275 million vehicles on the road today. QNX® software is trusted across industries including automotive, medical devices, industrial controls, robotics, commercial vehicles, rail, and aerospace and defense.

Regular

The Academic Partnerships Manager drives technical engagement with universities and academic programs to expand hands‑on use of our embedded technologies and strengthen the global developer ecosystem. Reporting to the Director of Developer Ecosystem, this role builds and manages partnerships that integrate our tools, platforms, and engineering practices directly into academic curricula, research labs, and student engineering initiatives.

• Lead the overall strategy for academic partnerships, ensuring alignment with product roadmaps, technical deliverables, and developer ecosystem goals.
• Maintain and scale relationships with engineering faculties, research groups, and technical program leads.
• Identify new academic institutions with strong embedded systems, robotics, automotive, or systems engineering programs.
• Manage operational workflows supporting academic programs (license provisioning, key renewals, Salesforce updates, procurement coordination).
• Collaborate with faculty to embed our OS, tools, SDKs, and development workflows into coursework, labs, and project‑based learning.
• Support technical workshops, engineering clubs, and student societies using our technology (e.g., robotics teams, embedded design groups).
• Sponsor and coordinate capstone and applied research projects, including technical scoping and SME alignment.
• Organize company participation in hackathons, engineering competitions, and innovation events with a strong technical focus.
• Coordinate guest lectures and technical deep‑dives delivered by internal engineers and product specialists.
• Represent the company at academic engineering forums, conferences, and technical seminars.
• Act as the primary interface between academic partners and internal engineering, product management, Dev Rel, and marketing teams.
• Ensure academic initiatives reinforce developer enablement, platform adoption, and long‑term ecosystem growth.
• Work with marketing to produce technically accurate materials for academic outreach.
• Track engagement metrics, technical outcomes, and program effectiveness; recommend improvements based on data.
• Explore grants, research funding, and government programs that support academic technical collaboration.
• Travel to campuses, conferences, and technical events as needed.

• Experience managing partnerships or programs in academic, developer, or technical ecosystems.
• Technical background or familiarity with software development.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to engage engineering faculty, students, and internal technical teams.
• Excellent organizational and project management skills; able to run multiple technical initiatives concurrently.
• Comfortable discussing developer workflows, tool chains, and platform capabilities with technical audiences.
• Ability to translate product features into academic engineering use cases.
• Experience working cross‑functionally with engineering, product, and technical marketing teams.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills with a systems‑thinking mindset.
• Willingness to travel for technical events and academic engagements.
• Fluent in English.

• Developer relations, technical marketing, product…