Director, Strategic Partnerships

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of Strategic Partnerships professionals, including direct reports.
• Own and grow strategic partnerships across payments and commerce technology, including card networks, investors, cloud and infrastructure providers, AI platforms, wallets, processors, and other ecosystem partners.
• Develop and execute partnership strategies that advance company and product priorities, growth, differentiation, market expansion, and distribution.
• Lead complex, product-oriented partnerships across Product, Engineering, Legal, Sales, and executive leadership.
• Source, evaluate, prioritize, and develop new strategic partnerships.
• Lead negotiations covering partnership structures, economics, go-to-market models, technical commitments, and success criteria.
• Drive partnerships from strategy and business case through negotiation, launch, commercialization, and ongoing management.
• Build senior-level executive relationships, identify expansion opportunities, and address partnership risks.
• Establish partnership goals, operating rhythms, and measurable success metrics.
• Represent partner priorities and market insights in product and company decision-making.
• Develop strategic perspectives on tokenization, payments infrastructure, agentic commerce, AI, and next-generation commerce technologies.
• Identify ecosystem shifts and translate them into recommendations for products, partnerships, distribution models, and strategic initiatives.
• Represent the company externally with senior payments and technology leaders.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, fintech business development, product strategy, or payments consulting.
• Understanding of the payments ecosystem, including issuers, processors, card networks, wallets, and commerce platforms.
• Ability to connect technical product functionality with partner and market needs.
• Demonstrated success managing complex partnerships and cross-functional projects.
• Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-paced environments with shifting priorities and emerging technologies.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, strategic mindset, and bias toward execution.

Nice to Have

• Experience working closely with product or engineering teams in a platform company or fintech infrastructure provider, particularly in a startup environment.
• Familiarity with tokenization, payment flows, reconciliation processes, or data compliance frameworks.
• Technical literacy and comfort discussing APIs, SDKs, and integration workflows.