Channel Partnerships

Our client is seeking a Referral Partnerships leader to build, scale, and manage a partner network that drives measurable revenue growth. This is a builder role for someone who has created a referral partnership business from the ground up, especially within SMB payments, fintech, or channel sales for vertical markets such as field services or personal services. This person works directly for our client and partners across Product, Marketing, Sales, and Legal to structure partnerships that are commercially sound, mutually beneficial, and built for long-term value. Success in this role is measured by business results, including leads, revenue, partner engagement, and partner-driven growth

What You Will Do:

• Identify, source, and qualify new referral partnership opportunities aligned with strategic growth goals.
• Build a referral partnership program from scratch or near-scratch, including partner sourcing, onboarding, enablement, and performance management.
• Build and maintain a strong pipeline of prospective partners across target verticals, including ISVs, VARs, resellers, referral partners, and other channel relationships.
• Lead end-to-end partnership negotiations, including commercial terms, SLAs, and joint go-to-market plans.
• Structure revenue-share, referral, co-sell, and other commercially sound partnership models.
• Create partner distribution strategies through direct hunting, BDR-sourced partnerships, SBE models, and unconventional channels.
• Pitch and win partners by clearly communicating the value of a young or lesser-known company in the market.
• Manage existing partner relationships to deepen engagement and expand revenue value.
• Collaborate with Marketing on co-branded campaigns and joint events.
• Work with Legal to draft and execute partnership agreements and NDAs.
• Define KPIs for partnership success and report performance to executive stakeholders.
• Represent the company at industry conferences and partner summits.
• Map the competitive partner landscape and share strategic insights with leadership.

What You Bring:

• 5+ years of experience in partnerships, business development, strategic alliances, or channel development with direct responsibility for building a referral business.
• Experience in a startup, Series A to C company, or company with 0 to 1 partnership motions.
• Experience building a partner program from scratch or near-scratch.
• Background in payments, payments-adjacent fintech, BNPL, pay-by-bank, embedded finance, alternative payment methods, or SMB-focused financial technology.
• Strong relationship network in the SMB payments or fintech ecosystem, or channel development experience within a target vertical such as field services.
• Proven track record sourcing and closing new partners, rather than only managing an inherited partner book.
• Experience creating distribution in scrappy environments, including companies without strong brand recognition or built-in market momentum.
• Proven track record closing complex, multi-stakeholder partnership deals.
• Experience developing partnerships that generate leads and revenue.
• Strong commercial acumen, including experience structuring revenue-share, referral, and co-sell models.
• Experience with ISV, VAR, reseller, referral, ISO, MSP, or financial institution distribution channels.
• Clear evidence of pitching and winning partners on a young company's value proposition.
• Experience using CRM tools such as Salesforce or HubSpot to manage pipeline and reporting.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with confident executive presence.
• Familiarity with how payment products are sold through partner networks is preferred.
• Experience managing partnerships across multiple verticals at the same time is preferred.