Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager - Enterprise

About the role

This role focuses on driving growth and product expansion through strategic partnerships. The Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager will identify and pursue high-leverage opportunities with category leaders, aiming to embed Mercury's financial services directly into major platforms. This involves securing deals where Mercury becomes the underlying financial layer for thousands of businesses, requiring outreach and relationship development at senior executive levels.

A key aspect of this position is structuring first-of-a-kind deals, including embedded finance arrangements and deep API integrations. The manager will leverage Mercury's full product suite to match capabilities with partner needs, developing detailed business cases and modeling deal economics. This requires cross-functional collaboration with product, engineering, legal, and finance teams to design the necessary infrastructure for complex integrations.

The successful candidate will build Mercury's enterprise partnerships motion from scratch, owning the strategy, targeting, deal structure, and execution. This involves defining the playbook for how Mercury approaches, negotiates, and measures success in this new channel. The role offers a direct line to leadership, emphasizing the opportunity to shape a critical new function within the company.

The target base salary for this role ranges from $198,700 to $276,000, with higher compensation for employees in major US tech hubs.

Skills that matter here

• strategic partnerships: This role is centered on initiating and managing high-impact partnerships to expand Mercury's reach and product capabilities.
• business development: The manager will identify, target, and pursue new partnership opportunities, driving deals from initial outreach through to launch.
• enterprise sales: The position requires closing large-scale platform-distribution deals, similar to complex enterprise sales cycles.
• API integrations: Experience with API-driven deals is crucial, as the role involves embedding financial infrastructure into third-party platforms through technical integrations.
• embedded finance: A core responsibility is architecting and negotiating embedded finance arrangements to integrate Mercury's services directly into partner platforms.

Who this role suits

• A person with 8-10+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, or enterprise sales, specifically with a background in closing platform-scale deals.
• Someone who possesses an active professional network that can be immediately leveraged for senior-level outreach and relationship building.
• An individual who thrives in ambiguous environments and is energized by the opportunity to build a new function from the ground up, defining strategy and execution.
• A candidate with strong commercial and financial acumen, capable of modeling deal economics and structuring complex incentive arrangements.

From the employer

What You'll Do:

• Win platform-distribution deals
• Identify, target, and pursue the highest-leverage partnership opportunities in Mercury's addressable universe: category leaders across ecommerce (Shopify), social selling (TikTok, Meta), legal (Clio), productivity (Google), and any platform where ambitious businesses already live, then make Mercury the financial layer underneath them.
• Close deals where Mercury becomes natively embedded in a platform, reaching thousands of potential customers through a single signed agreement.
• Own outreach and relationship development at the senior executive and C-suite level, leveraging your existing network to open doors and build new ones fast.
• Drive deals through the full lifecycle: from initial outreach and business case development through term negotiation, legal close, integration scoping, and launch.
• Structure first-of-a-kind deals.
• Architect bespoke partnership structures: embedded finance arrangements, deep API integrations, co-distribution models, and joint product experiences that create strategic lock-in and measurable impact.
• Leverage Mercury's full product suite (banking, payments, cards, APIs, MCP, CLI tooling) as strategic currency in negotiations, matching the right capabilities to each partner's specific needs.
• Develop and pressure-test the business case for each partnership, modeling deal economics and aligning cross-functional stakeholders at Mercury.
• Own the channel from day one. You will build Mercury's enterprise partnerships motion from scratch, with full ownership over strategy, targeting, deal structure, and execution.
• Define the playbook: who we pursue, how we position, how we negotiate, and what success looks like a year from now.
• Have a direct line to Mercury's leadership team and cross-functional leadership. Partner cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, and GTM to design the infrastructure needed to support large, complex partner integrations.

What We're Looking For:

• 8-10+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, or enterprise sales including meaningful time at a high-growth technology or similar company.
• A track record of closing platform-scale deals. You've closed agreements that unlocked distribution at scale, embedding your product into a platform, ecosystem, or distribution channel that reached far more customers than a direct sales motion ever could.
• An existing network you can activate immediately. Your relationships are in the right places. You have been actively involved in your industry - speaking at conferences, events, and are regarded as a thought leader in your space.
• Experience at a high-growth, category-defining technology company. You know what it means to move fast, operate with limited resources, and close deals before the window closes.
• Deep experience structuring embedded or API-driven deals. You understand how technical integrations create commercial moats, and you know how to negotiate them.
• Strong commercial and financial fluency. You can model deal economics, structure complex incentive arrangements, and align on terms with sophisticated counterparts.
• The ability to operate in ambiguity and build from scratch. Mercury has not had a dedicated enterprise partnerships function. You're energized by this ground floor opportunity and the chance to build it from scratch.
• Technical credibility. You don't need to write code, but you can hold a substantive conversation about APIs, integration architecture, and what it means to embed financial infrastructure into a third-party platform.
• Strong plus: experience in fintech, payments, embedded finance, or AI-native products.

What We Offer:

• The total rewards package at Mercury includes base salary, equity (stock options/RSUs), and benefits.
• Our salary and equity ranges are highly competitive within the SaaS and fintech industry and are updated regularly using the most reliable compensation survey data for our industry.
• New hire offers are made based on a candidate’s experience, expertise, geographic location, and internal pay equity relative to peers.
• Our target new hire base salary ranges for this role are the following:
• US employees in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $220,800 - $276,000
• US employees outside of the New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, or the San Francisco Bay Area: $198,700 - $248,400
• Mercury values diversity & belonging and is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All individuals seeking employment at Mercury are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected characteristic.
• We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for applicants with disabilities or special needs. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.