Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships

Job Description:

The Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships provides day-to-day leadership for CSI's strategic partnership function and is responsible for developing, managing, and optimizing relationships with third-party providers whose products CSI resells or refers, as well as organizations that distribute CSI solutions. This role leads a portfolio of strategic partner relationships and ensures that partnerships align with CSI's corporate strategy, product portfolio, customer needs, and revenue-growth objectives.

The Senior Director serves as a primary point of coordination among partners and CSI's Product, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, Risk, Technology, and Operations teams. Responsibilities include evaluating partnership opportunities, supporting business cases and due diligence, negotiating and structuring agreements, coordinating partner onboarding and launches, overseeing renewals and partner exits, monitoring financial and operational performance, and resolving cross-functional issues that could affect partner or customer outcomes.

The Senior Director monitors partnership revenue, profitability, contractual obligations, customer feedback, market trends, and other key performance indicators to identify opportunities, address risks, and improve portfolio performance. The Senior Director also leads the day-to-day work of the Strategic Partnerships team, assigns and prioritizes partner responsibilities, develops team members, and ensures appropriate coverage across CSI's partner portfolio. The role works closely with executive and business leadership to communicate partnership performance, recommend strategic actions, and advance partnerships that expand CSI's product capabilities, market reach, and long-term value.

• Lead the day-to-day strategic partnership function and provide direction to partnership team members.
• Develop and execute partnership strategies aligned with CSI's corporate and product objectives.
• Manage executive-level relationships with assigned strategic partners.
• Identify, evaluate, and prioritize new partnership opportunities.
• Lead or coordinate partner due diligence, business-case development, selection, negotiation, and contracting.
• Oversee partner onboarding, integration coordination, launch readiness, ongoing management, renewals, and exits.
• Establish partner governance practices, performance standards, scorecards, and recurring business reviews.
• Monitor partnership revenue, profitability, performance, contractual commitments, and customer impact.
• Coordinate with Product, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Legal, Risk, Technology, and Operations to drive partnership execution.
• Identify and resolve issues affecting partner performance, internal execution, or customer outcomes.
• Support partner enablement, go-to-market planning, sales readiness, and joint growth initiatives.
• Maintain awareness of industry trends, competitive partnerships, emerging technologies, and potential market opportunities.
• Prepare partnership recommendations, portfolio updates, and decision materials for senior leadership.
• Represent CSI in partner meetings, industry events, conferences, and other external forums.
• Coach and develop partnership team members and ensure effective allocation of partner responsibilities.

• Bachelor's degree in business, finance, marketing, technology, or a related field.
• An advanced degree is preferred.
• Seven or more years of experience in strategic partnerships, business development, channel management, product partnerships, or a related discipline.
• Experience with in financial technology, banking technology, SaaS, payments, or financial services is preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex vendor, referral, reseller, and strategic partner relationships.
• Experience negotiating commercial agreements and working with pricing, revenue-sharing, and reseller models.
• Strong understanding of partnership life cycles, including evaluation, contracting, onboarding, performance management, renewal, and termination.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives without direct authority over all participating teams.
• Experience managing or developing employees is preferred.
• Strong analytical, financial, negotiation, communication, and executive-presentation skills.
• Ability to manage competing priorities, resolve ambiguity, and exercise sound business judgment.
• Experience using CRM, reporting, and analytics tools to manage partner activity and measure performance.

As a forward-thinking…