Partner Development Lead

Since we opened our doors in 2009, the world of commerce has evolved immensely, and so has Square. After enabling anyone to take payments and never miss a sale, we saw sellers stymied by disparate, outmoded products and tools that wouldn’t work together.

So we expanded into software and started building integrated, omnichannel solutions – to help sellers sell online, manage inventory, offer buy now, pay later functionality, book appointments, engage loyal buyers, and hire and pay staff. Across it all, we’ve embedded financial services tools at the point of sale, so merchants can access a business loan and manage their cash flow in one place. Afterpay furthers our goal to provide omnichannel tools that unlock meaningful value and growth, enabling sellers to capture the next generation shopper, increase order sizes, and compete at a larger scale.

Today, we are a partner to sellers of all sizes – large, enterprise-scale businesses with complex operations, sellers just starting, as well as merchants who began selling with Square and have grown larger over time. As our sellers grow, so do our solutions. There is a massive opportunity in front of us. We’re building a significant, meaningful, and lasting business, and we are helping sellers worldwide do the same.

The Role

The Block Ecosystem Partnerships team leads product partnerships, business development and commercialization efforts for Afterpay, Cash App, and Square products. This specialized team sources and develops go-to-market strategy for product partners that enable and extend the reach of our commercial products across the payments and technology ecosystem. They build effective relationships with the largest players in the payments, finance, and technology industries, and drive critical results across the business. We are looking for an experienced partnerships practitioner with deep expertise in enabling and growing first-party products through third-party ecosystems.

This Partner Development Lead will work closely with our cross-functional leadership team to integrate and grow ecosystem partnerships that represent the biggest upside opportunities for our business globally. 

You’ll partner directly with leaders across Afterpay, Cash App as well as Square Product, Engineering, Sales, Account Management, Marketing, Finance, Compliance, and Legal. You’ll drive a global strategy for your partners and execute on that strategy in conjunction with cross-functional colleagues – especially those that may work with these same partners but in other ways. Primary responsibility for the performance of your partners sits with you, and you will continually innovate to ensure that Block remains on the cutting edge of additional developments within the partner portfolio as the landscape fundamentally changes (e.g., Agentic Commerce).

The ideal candidate will have an understanding of the economics of the payments space and deep knowledge of the payments ecosystem – for consumers and for businesses alike. This individual should also have an understanding of what will be needed to properly resource a partner strategy, and work with internal stakeholders to develop a plan for ensuring the success of a partner. A deep sense of ownership, drive, and entrepreneurship is essential.

You will:

• Develop strategy: Create and implement an overarching plan and strategy for maximizing the effectiveness of a partnership – both maximizing commercial upside and product extensibility at scale 


• Build relationships: Establish strong rapport with partners at every level (executive to working groups, across functions) to influence prioritization, decision-making, and advance our goals


• Design scalable programs: Build and project manage a partnership program that advances our goals as well as partner objectives at both local and global scale across all relevant regions


• Commercialize b2b and b2b2c payment products: Lead commercialization of new products by refining and executing our growth partner distribution strategy. Lead end-to-end partner negotiations to deliver maximum distribution of our payments products, including upsell and cross-sell of new products and features. 


• Maximize out-of-network reach: Drive integrations and efficiencies to reach the maximum number of consumers through partner platforms and ecosystems

Qualifications

• 10+ years of business development or partner management experience, preferably at an innovative payments company. 


• A demonstrated track record of success managing commercial products and programs, ideally in payments or fintech. 


• Proven ability to build C-suite relationships and navigate external organizations both to identify internal champions and to influence decision makers. You are an expert negotiator with a strong understanding of commercial contracts and complex negotiating dynamics that may be simultaneously cooperative and competitive.


• Ultimate cross-functional team player: Establish yourself as the go-to commercial voice for our partnership strategy that can be relied on by multiple internal functions and teams. You’ll act as an utmost connector and open doors for others, while providing critical market feedback to improve our product. 


• Deep comfort operating in the ambiguity of an ever-evolving product that operates at scale globally. 


• Genuine interest and savviness in product – especially working with multiple product and engineering teams for a single partner


• Willingness to travel (primarily domestically but sometimes internationally) for both internal and external meetings.


• BS/BA required; MBA or Masters degree a plus