QNX-Academic Partnerships Manager

Worker Sub-Type:

Regular

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.

Are you the person we are looking for?

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.

You will:

• 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, DevRel, 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.

You will have:

• 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.
• Technical knowledge that enables you to discuss developer workflows, toolchains, and platform capabilities to 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.
• A willingness to travel for technical events and academic engagements.

Any of these would be great but not essential:

• Developer relations, technical marketing, product management, or engineering experience.
• Experience with embedded systems, IOT Platforms, RTOS concepts, or C/C++
• Prior work with universities or engineering programs.
• Teaching or instructional experience in technical subjects.
• Familiarity with open‑source development workflows.
• Experience organizing technical workshops, hackathons, or engineering competitions.
• Curriculum development or lab design experience.
• Additional language skills (French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean).

Accelerate your career with QNX!

#LI-KH1

Scheduled Weekly Hours:

40

Compensation Hiring Base Salary Range:

$96,000.00 - $135,000.00

Please be advised that the compensation hiring range indicated herein is provided solely as a good-faith estimate of expected base compensation for the position. The actual compensation offered will be determined at the time of hire and is contingent upon multiple factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s qualifications, relevant experience, demonstrated skills, and results of assessments conducted during the hiring process.

Bonus:

The BlackBerry Variable Incentive Pay (VIP) program is an organization-wide bonus incentive program which aims to reward full-time eligible employees for their contribution to BlackBerry’s success. VIP payments are made in addition to base salary and factor in company’s performance as a way for employees to share in BlackBerry’s achievements.

Benefits:

The BlackBerry Employee Benefits programs offer a wide range of benefits that support your physical, financial and personal well-being. BlackBerry remains committed to offering affordable benefits including coverage for medical, dental, vision, life, disability insurance, retirement, employee share purchase program and paid-time-off to those that meet the eligibility requirements.

Disclosure of Position Status:

This is an active opening. We are seeking to fill this position immediately

Disclosure of Artificial Intelligence:

We do not use artificial intelligence (AI) to screen, assess, or select applicants at any stage of our recruitment process. All applications are reviewed and evaluated by our hiring team.