What You Will Do
Build New Partner Relationships
- Identify and prioritize the brands most likely to benefit from a Cardless card program — drawing on market data, competitive intelligence, and your own network to build a high-quality prospect list.
- Develop relationships with senior decision-makers at target companies over the time horizon that enterprise deals require.
- Represent Cardless credibly and compellingly to executives at major consumer brands, financial institutions, and loyalty programs.
- Work with the marketing and product teams to ensure the materials, demos, and narratives you bring to market reflect what Cardless actually does and where it is going.
Work the Consulting and RFP Channel
- Build and maintain relationships with the consulting firms and networks that run RFP and vendor selection processes for large card program decisions.
- Ensure Cardless is known, understood, and credibly represented in the processes these firms run.
- Develop a point of view on which consulting firms are most active in the card space, which relationships matter most, and where Cardless should invest relationship-building resources.
- Respond to formal RFP processes with materials that are accurate, compelling, and differentiated — working with the product, finance, and partnerships teams to pull together the right inputs.
Target Companies with Existing Card Programs
- Identify companies that currently have card programs through incumbent issuers — and build the case for why Cardless represents a materially better partner.
- Develop deep familiarity with the competitive landscape: what the major incumbent issuers offer, where they fall short, and what a company that has lived through a card program launch actually cares about.
- Build relationships at these companies in a way that is respectful of existing contracts and focused on what comes next.
- Work with the product and partnerships teams to ensure the Cardless pitch is grounded in real product capabilities and backed by the performance of existing programs.
Own the Business Development Process
- Manage a pipeline of prospects from first contact through signed agreement, with the discipline and rigor that enterprise sales requires — accurate forecasting, clear next steps, and no deals falling through the cracks.
- Work with the leadership team to prioritize which opportunities to pursue and at what pace, given the constraints of the partnerships team that will need to execute what BD signs.
- Build and maintain the systems — CRM, contact databases, outreach cadences — that make BD operations repeatable and scalable as the team grows.
- Provide regular, honest reporting on pipeline health, deal velocity, and the competitive dynamics you observe in the market.
What We Are Looking For
Experience
- 6-10 years in business development, partnerships, or a sales role with meaningful exposure to financial services — ideally including time at a bank, card issuer, or payment network.
- A demonstrated track record of closing complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise deals — not just sourcing conversations, but owning the process from prospecting through signature.
- Existing network in the card and payments space — relationships with decision-makers at consumer brands, financial institutions, loyalty programs, or the consulting firms that advise them.
- Experience navigating formal RFP processes for financial services technology or infrastructure is a strong plus.
Skills and Competencies
- Network and Relationship Building: You have spent years building relationships in the right places, and you know how to open a door that is not obviously open. Your network is a genuine competitive advantage, not a LinkedIn following.
- Financial Services Fluency: You understand how card programs work — the economics, the players, the contract structures, the regulatory context — well enough to have a credible commercial conversation with a bank executive or a CFO.
- Sales Process and Discipline: You run a clean pipeline. You know where every deal is, what the next step is, and what it will take to close it. You do not lose deals because something fell through the cracks.
- Communication and Presence: You are effective in a room with senior executives. You can explain what Cardless does in two minutes and make it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. You can also write.
- Competitive Intelligence: You stay current on what incumbents are doing, what new entrants are building, and how the market is evolving — and you use that knowledge to sharpen how Cardless is positioned.
- Judgment and Autonomy: You can prioritize your own time across a large number of potential opportunities and make good calls about where to invest without needing to be managed at the activity level.
Why This Role
Cardless has found product-market fit, has live programs with major brands, and is growing fast. What it does not yet have is a dedicated business development function — the top of the commercial funnel has been driven by the founders and the existing partnerships team. This role is the first dedicated BD hire, which means the person who joins now will set the template for how Cardless does business.
CardlessSan Francisco, CA
