Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships Austin, in-person

Location: Austin, TX
Department: Strategic Partnerships
Reports To: Executive Leadership

inKind is transforming restaurant financing and customer engagement through an innovative fintech platform that provides restaurants with growth capital while helping consumers discover and enjoy dining experiences nationwide.

As we continue to scale, we are building strategic partnerships that expand how consumers access inKind, create value for our restaurant partners, strengthen our platform, and unlock meaningful new growth opportunities.

inKind is seeking a Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships to lead the strategy, orchestration, execution, and overall outcomes of some of the company's most important strategic partnerships.

This is a senior leadership role operating at the intersection of business strategy, product, technology, financial services, operations, and go-to-market execution
. You will work closely with executive leadership and senior external partners to translate complex partnership opportunities into scalable programs that deliver measurable commercial and customer impact.

You will own the partnership operating model from strategic alignment and solution design through implementation, launch, adoption, optimization, and expansion. This includes establishing governance, aligning executive stakeholders, driving cross-functional accountability, identifying risks and opportunities, and ensuring that partnerships deliver against their strategic and financial objectives.

This is not a traditional partnership-management or program-management position. The Senior Director will be expected to understand the underlying economics and strategic value of each partnership, influence product and commercial strategy, challenge assumptions, navigate ambiguity, and drive decisions across teams without relying on direct authority.

You will bring structure to complexity while maintaining the speed and entrepreneurial mindset required in a rapidly scaling organization.

• Own the strategy, operating model, and overall execution of major strategic partnerships from initial planning through launch, optimization, and expansion.
• Translate executive commitments, commercial objectives, and partnership agreements into actionable strategies, roadmaps, work streams, and measurable outcomes.
• Serve as a senior relationship leader for key external partners, building trusted relationships with executives and functional leaders.
• Develop a deep understanding of each partner's business model, strategic priorities, customer proposition, organizational structure, and decision-making processes.
• Identify opportunities to expand partnerships into new products, customer experiences, channels, markets, or commercial models.
• Ensure partnership activity remains aligned with inKind's broader company, product, consumer, restaurant, and growth strategies.

• Act as the central strategic connector across Product, Engineering, Data, Marketing, Sales, Partner Success, Operations, Support, Finance, Legal, Risk, Compliance, and Information Security.
• Establish clear ownership and accountability across complex initiatives spanning multiple teams and organizations.
• Create executive governance structures that enable fast decision-making, transparent escalation, and clear accountability.
• Lead executive steering meetings, strategic reviews, partnership planning sessions, and critical decision forums.
• Surface competing priorities, organizational constraints, and strategic tradeoffs early and drive stakeholders toward clear decisions.
• Influence senior leaders across inKind and partner organizations without requiring direct reporting authority.
• Develop a comprehensive understanding of partnership economics, contractual commitments, strategic value, customer outcomes, and long-term growth potential.
• Partner with Finance, Data, Product, Marketing, and commercial leadership to establish clear business cases and success measures.
• Define and track KPIs across areas such as customer acquisition, activation, engagement, transaction volume, revenue, restaurant impact, retention, and partnership ROI.
• Evaluate performance against business cases and identify opportunities to improve economics, adoption, customer experience, and strategic value.
• Identify new opportunities within existing relationships and help develop proposals for partnership expansion.
• Provide executive leadership with clear…