Partnerships Manager

Mission

Own Valon's relationships with the external companies and software our platform and go-to-market depend on. This person finds, evaluates, negotiates, and manages strategic vendor and technology partners (payments, AI, data, infrastructure, and service providers) so that Valon's enterprise customers get a best-in-class platform and our team moves faster than anyone in the industry.

About the role

As a founding member of Valon's GTM team, you'll work side by side with our founding Strategic Account Executive and founding Sales Engineer, and partner closely with Product, Engineering, Legal, Security, and Finance. You'll be the owner of how Valon works with outside companies: sourcing the right partner for the right need (a payments provider, an AI model or tooling partner, a data or infrastructure vendor, to name a few), running the evaluation and negotiation, and managing the relationship long term. In enterprise deals, you'll bring partners into the sales cycle when a customer's requirements depend on them and make sure those integrations and commitments hold up in production. It's a highly strategic, high-judgment role in a regulated environment, where the stakes of a partner decision are high and the playbook doesn't exist yet.

Who you are

• An entrepreneurial partnerships, business development, or vendor-strategy professional who thrives in early-stage environments and is energized by building from the ground up.

• Experienced sitting at the table with strategic technology and service partners, including payments, AI, data, and infrastructure companies, and comfortable negotiating complex, high-stakes agreements.

• A strong relationship-builder who earns credibility with partner executives and internal stakeholders alike, and knows how to get things done inside large organizations on both sides.

• A genuine partner to Sales and Sales Engineering who understands what customers need from the platform and can translate that into the right partner decision.

• Able to quickly grasp complex technical and regulatory concepts and weigh trade-offs across cost, risk, capability, and speed.

• A self-starter with excellent organizational skills, sound judgment under pressure, and relentless follow-through.

• A systems builder who turns one-off deals into documented, repeatable processes.

Responsibilities

• Source, evaluate, and recommend strategic vendor and technology partners (e.g., payments, AI, data, infrastructure, and professional service providers) against clear business, technical, and regulatory criteria.

• Own the partner lifecycle end to end: market scans, RFPs and evaluations, due diligence, negotiation, contracting, onboarding, performance management, and renewal.

• Negotiate commercial terms, SLAs, pricing, and partner agreements in partnership with Legal, Finance, and Security.

• Build and maintain executive-level relationships at key partners, including regular business reviews, escalation paths, and joint roadmap conversations.

• Partner with our Strategic AE, Sales Engineer, and executives to bring the right partners into enterprise deals and customer implementations, and keep commitments to customers on track.

• Work with Product and Engineering to align partner capabilities with the ValonOS roadmap and flag build-vs-buy-vs-partner decisions.

• Partner with Security, Compliance, and Legal on third-party risk, vendor due diligence, and regulatory expectations for partners in a regulated environment.

• Track partner performance, spend, and risk with clear reporting and a single source of truth for the partner ecosystem.

• Manage multi-threaded relationships and escalations across partner and Valon teams, resolving issues quickly and keeping leadership informed.

• Build and document the partner management playbooks, intake process, and scorecards that scale with the growing team.

• Represent Valon at partner meetings, industry events, and client sites.

• Travel 25% of the time.

Qualifications

• 5-10+ years in partnerships, business development, strategic alliances, vendor management, or procurement-adjacent strategy roles, with experience owning high-stakes external relationships.

• Experience at an early-stage startup or a leading AI or technology company, with exposure to how fast-moving teams select and work with strategic partners.

• Track record negotiating and managing complex technology or services agreements with payments, AI, data, or infrastructure providers.

• Experience working with Legal, Security, Finance, and Engineering stakeholders; familiarity with third-party risk and vendor due diligence, ideally in financial services or another regulated industry.

• Strong technical fluency: able to understand integrations, APIs, data movement, and implementation risk well enough to evaluate partners and align teams.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, including executive-level presentation and negotiation.

• High agency in ambiguous, founder-led, zero-to-one environments.

• Ability and desire to learn mortgage deeply; prior mortgage or mortgage-technology experience is helpful but not required.

Benefits

• Compensation: competitive salary with a meaningful stake in the company via equity, and 401(k) plan. The base salary range reflects multiple levels. We assess level based on a combination of experience and interview performance.