Head of Enterprise and Strategic Partnerships

San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Portland, OR, or Remote within United States

Before the iPhone existed, Apple went to America's wireless carriers with terms none of them had ever granted: no carrier logo on the device, no carrier software, and control over how it was sold. Verizon walked away. Cingular said yes, reportedly before it had seen a working prototype, and on January 9, 2007 became the exclusive U.S. carrier for a phone the public had not yet seen.

Apple gave up the reach of every other carrier, Cingular gave up control it had never surrendered, and both got something worth more. No template could have produced that agreement. People with the relationships, the nerve and a structure in mind did.

(Fun fact. Most people think it was A&T, but “Cingular” was the one who negotiated and announced it, and “AT&T” is what the carrier was called by the time the phone shipped in June 2007. That’s why most people say “the AT&T and iPhone deal.”)

At Mercury, we are looking for the person who will do that for us. We are building the financial layer for ambitious people of all kinds, and the platforms where they already work are where we want to be: the default bank for AI, the core banking
* partner for merchants. One signed agreement can put Mercury in front of millions of businesses. We are a company of founders and small teams trying to change the world, and this isn't a fixed role. We expect the nature of work is changing, and a leader paired with AI tools and the autonomy to build can create 10x outcomes: modeling deals, shaping integrations with our product teams and standing up the function as you go.

Bring your relationships, and we will bring the product, the team and the room to build something that doesn't exist yet.

The Strategic Partnerships team drives customer growth, product expansion and strategic advantage through high-impact partner relationships. We have built a strong business through accounting firms, VCs, accelerators, incorporators and e-commerce partners, working closely with Product, GTM, Finance, Legal, Risk and Operations. That motion works. The next chapter is different, and it starts with you.

This is a leadership role with a single mandate: land the handful of partnerships that change Mercury's trajectory. You will own Mercury's most ambitious platform relationships, including making Mercury the default bank for AI and the core banking partner for merchants, and you will be measured on deals that create distribution at a scale no direct sales motion can match.

These are one-of-a-kind deals. Nobody has a template for them, so you will design the structure, and neither side will have done anything quite like it before. You will do it largely through relationships you already have, with the senior executives who decide at the world's most important technology companies.

You will build the enterprise partnerships function from scratch, report into Mercury's leadership team and have a direct line to the CEO. As the motion proves out, you will hire and lead the team that runs it.

Win the deals that matter most

• Own Mercury's top partnership targets across the AI ecosystem and the largest commerce, productivity and vertical software platforms, and make Mercury the financial layer underneath them.
• Open doors personally at the C-suite and senior executive level, using your existing network to get Mercury into rooms that most companies cannot reach.
• Take each deal through its full lifecycle, from first conversation and business case to term negotiation, legal close, integration scoping and launch.

Architect first-of-a-kind structures

• Design bespoke arrangements such…