Senior Product Partnerships Manager - Payroll

About the role

This role focuses on expanding Mercury's financial tools for startups by building and maintaining a network of partners, specifically within the payroll vendor ecosystem. The work involves leading the entire lifecycle of partnerships, from identifying potential vendors through to negotiating contracts and ensuring successful integration. Success in this position means enhancing Mercury's product offerings through effective external relationships that support the company's growth.

The Product Partnerships team acts as the central point for Mercury's external relationships, ensuring that workflows between partners, customers, and internal teams are efficient. This manager will be Mercury's internal expert on payroll vendors, proactively addressing any issues or escalations that arise. The role requires a deep understanding of the financial infrastructure that underpins Mercury's services and an ability to translate complex technical and regulatory details into actionable strategies.

A key aspect of this position is facilitating collaboration across various internal departments, including product, legal, finance, and engineering. The manager will drive discussions to align stakeholders and remove obstacles, ensuring that partnership initiatives move forward smoothly. This requires strong communication skills and the ability to operate effectively within a regulated environment while managing multiple critical projects simultaneously.

The target base salary for this role ranges from $162,800 to $226,100 annually, with variations based on geographic location within the US.

Skills that matter here

• banking: This role requires a background in banking operations to understand the financial infrastructure and regulatory environment.
• payroll operations: Expertise in payroll operations is essential for managing partnerships with payroll vendors and understanding their systems.
• strategic partnerships: The core of this role involves identifying, developing, and managing strategic relationships with external vendors.
• negotiation: This manager will lead contract negotiations, evaluating deal economics and advocating for Mercury's interests.
• project management: The role requires strong organizational skills to manage complex projects and coordinate across multiple stakeholders.

Who this role suits

• A person who thrives on building and maintaining complex, high-stakes relationships.
• Someone with a strong product sense and an interest in how financial infrastructure enables customer outcomes.
• An effective communicator and highly organized individual, comfortable navigating discussions with many stakeholders.
• A candidate who can remain calm and focused while working on multiple critical initiatives in parallel, demonstrating creativity within constraints.

From the employer

What You Will Do:

• Manage a portfolio of expansion partnerships end-to-end, with particular focus on Mercury’s payroll vendor ecosystem
• Lead vendor selection processes, including evaluating RFPs and making recommendations on best-fit partners for Mercury’s product and business needs
• Structure and lead negotiations, evaluating the economics behind proposed deals, understanding the available levers, and knowing when to push versus compromise
• Sell the impact and value of being a partner to Mercury, while negotiating the best outcomes for Mercury
• Serve as Mercury’s internal expert on the payroll vendor ecosystem — building and maintaining our collective knowledge base
• Proactively identify and respond to partner incidents, integration issues, and escalations — unblocking teams with urgency and sound judgment
• Facilitate productive cross-functional discussions across product, legal, finance, and engineering — driving alignment and unblocking teams

What You Should Bring:

• 8+ years of relevant banking/payroll operations experience and strategic partnerships experience with a track record of leading deals end-to-end, including contract negotiation
• Experience managing or working closely with lending management system providers
• Be a strong partnership leader who enjoys owning complex, high-stakes relationships
• Be an excellent communicator and highly organized project manager, comfortable operating across many stakeholders
• Consistently exercise empathy, especially in highly regulated and constrained environments
• Have a strong product sense and interest in how financial infrastructure enables customer outcomes
• Be an effective negotiator with experience navigating complex commercial and regulatory discussions
• Be technically inclined or comfortable interfacing with engineering and compliance teams on complex systems
• Stay calm and focused while working on multiple critical initiatives in parallel
• Exercise creativity while operating within regulatory and operational constraints

What We Offer:

• Competitive base salary and equity (stock options)
• Benefits package
• Salary ranges based on experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity
• Target new hire base salary ranges for this role:
• US employees in New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles or San Francisco: $180,900 - $226,100
• US employees outside of New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles or San Francisco: $162,800 - $203,500
• Commitment to diversity & belonging and Equal Employment Opportunity