Senior Business Development Executive - MENA

Deriv; Dubai; On-site; AED 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Deriv in Dubai seeks a senior Growth Partnerships executive to own high-value IBs, affiliates, and fintech partnerships across the MENA region, negotiating structure and terms.

You’ll manage onboarding to revenue, spot underperforming accounts early, and influence deal economics with leadership. Fluency in English and Arabic is required; a background in financial services is preferred and AI tools are used daily.

Qualifications

• Evidence of closing deals with partners in a performance-driven environment.
• Ability to structure commercial deals and drive revenue growth across a portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Recruit and grow high-value IBs, affiliates, fintech partners, and payment providers across MENA.
• Own the full lifecycle from onboarding to revenue performance; pre-empt underperforming accounts and fix them.
• Negotiate commission structures, volume targets, and support agreements with leadership.
• Work in AI-enabled onboarding and lifecycle systems, flagging gaps for product/engineering teams.
• Mentor junior Business Development Executives and share deal-structuring insights.
• Represent Deriv at conferences and partner events to open doors.

Skills

Partnerships

Negotiation

Deal closure

AI tools

Education

Bachelor's degree in business, economics, finance, or equivalent

Job description

Job Description:

You’ve already recruited partners, closed deals, and learned what a bad commission structure costs. Now you’ll do it with a bigger portfolio, tougher accounts, and more say in how the deals get built - and you’ll be the person newer executives turn to when a partner conversation gets hard.

Why This Matters

Deriv processes more than $700B in monthly trading volume. A significant share of that comes through partners - Introducing Brokers, affiliates, fintech partners, and payment providers who bring traders to the platform across more than 150 countries.

The Growth Partnerships function sits at the heart of that engine. When a high-value IB in MENA goes live, when an affiliate activates a corridor that's been stalled for months, when a renegotiation actually holds instead of falling apart - that's the kind of outcome a senior executive is expected to own.

Real money, real regulations, real consequences. The portfolio you carry moves the region's numbers, not just your own.

Why Deriv

• 65%+ of customer enquiries resolved by AI, with genuine judgment about when to escape
• Multi-agent systems handling partner onboarding, lifecycle management, and operational workflows across the GP function
• 400+ internal users on our workflow orchestration platform
• Campaign pipelines producing content in hours, not weeks

These aren’t tools you learn once and forget. You’ll work in them daily, and you’re expected to know them well enough to say when they’re getting it wrong.

What You’ll Do

Partner acquisition and recruitment.

• Recruit and grow high-value IBs, affiliates, fintech partners, payment providers, and strategic alliances across your assigned MENA markets - including the harder-to-close accounts junior executives tend to hand off.

Portfolio activation and performance.

• Own the full lifecycle for a larger, more complex portfolio, from onboarding through to revenue performance. Spot underperforming accounts before the numbers make it obvious, and build the plan to fix them.

Commercial deal structuring.

• Negotiate commission structures, volume targets, and support agreements with more latitude on terms than an entry-level role carries. Know the unit economics well enough to defend a deal to your own leadership, not just to the partner.

AI-enabled operational contribution.

• Work inside AI-enabled onboarding and lifecycle systems, and flag workflow gaps to product and engineering with enough specificity that they can actually act on it.

Mentorship within the team.

• Help onboard and troubleshoot for newer Business Development Executives, sharing what you’ve learned about reading partners and structuring deals that hold up.

Industry representation.

• Represent Deriv at conferences and partner events - including iFX Expo, Finance Magnates, Forex Expo Dubai, and regional growth events - where you’re expected to open doors, not just attend.

Who You Are

• You’ve spent a couple of years in business development, partnerships, or sales within online trading, FX/CFD, fintech, or a comparably performance-driven digital ecosystem, and you can point to deals you actually closed.
• You know how IB and affiliate ecosystems operate well enough to spot a bad deal structure before it costs anyone money.
• You don’t just open conversations - you close them, and you can explain why a deal was structured the way it was without leaning on a script.
• You’re the person a newer teammate asks when a partner conversation stalls, and you’re comfortable being that resource without a formal management title.
• You use AI tools daily in your own workflow, and when something in the system doesn’t fit how partners actually behave, you say so specifically instead of working around it quietly.
• Fluency in English and Arabic is required, given the role’s focus on MENA. Additional languages - French, Spanish, or Portuguese - are an advantage if your remit extends further.
• You hold a relevant degree in business, economics, finance, or equivalent, and have close to five years of relevant experience.

The Honest Reality

This is demanding work. You’ll be handed the accounts junior executives couldn’t close, and some of them won’t close for you either. You’ll make commercial calls with incomplete information and live with how they play out - and you’ll be expected to help train the person next to you while you’re still building out your own portfolio.

What you’ll get in return: real weight in the region’s numbers, credibility with operators who’ve been doing this longer than you have, and more say in deal terms than an entry-level role would ever give you.

If you want a role where the hard accounts get handed to someone more senior, this isn’t it. If you want to be the person those accounts get handed to, it might be.

Requirements: