Global Head of Partnerships

Thought Machine; Greater London; On-site; GBP 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Highly competitive salary

Pension plan (match up to 5%)

Life insurance - three times annual •

Maternity/ paternity leave (six months

Shared parental leave

25 days holiday and bank holidays

Flexible working hours

Cycle-to-work scheme

Electric car scheme

Season ticket loan

All the latest tech you need

Job summary

Thought Machine seeks a Head of Global Partnerships to architect and grow our partner ecosystem, bringing Vault Core and Vault Payments to banks and fintechs worldwide. You will lead a global team, craft commercial strategies, and drive revenue through partner-enabled solutions.

The role requires strong commercial acumen, deep fintech partnerships experience, and a passion for transforming legacy banking tech with modern cloud-native solutions.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in partnerships, business development or product strategy in fintech or enterprise SaaS.
• Proven ability to close complex, multi-million pound deals and align roadmaps with partners.
• Strong leadership and team development experience at scale.
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills with senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute ecosystem strategy and architecture across global markets.
• Design and negotiate high-stakes commercial agreements and GTM strategies.
• Develop enablement playbooks to turn joint-solutions into sellable products.
• Lead and scale a team of partnerships managers to deliver outcomes.
• Align partnerships with product roadmaps to ensure value and reliability.
• Provide market insights and competitive intelligence to guide decisions.
• Establish standards (Vault-Certified) for partner quality and delivery.

Skills

Partnerships

Business development

Product strategy

Leadership

Communication

Job description

Thought Machine's mission is bold – to properly and permanently rid the world's banks of legacy technology. To achieve this, we have developed the foundations of modern banking through core and payments technology which run natively in the cloud. What we are attempting is hard and means we need great people working together to build great technology.

We have grown rapidly in the past few years – growing our team to more than 550 individuals across offices in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney and our newly established Engineering Hub in Lisbon. We have raised more than £500m in funding and our investors include Molten Ventures, Eurazeo, Intesa Sanpaolo, Temasek, Nyca Partners, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, Standard Chartered Ventures, and more.

We have created a culture that enables our team to produce the best work in the industry while ensuring we have fun along the way. We're regularly cited as having a fantastic workplace culture and have been recognised by Sifted magazine as having one of the highest Glassdoor ratings for a UK fintech company and the industry's most generous employee share package. Named one of the world's most innovative fintechs by Global Finance Magazine, we were also recognised by the Financial Times as one of Europe's fastest-growing companies for two consecutive years—and a UK Best Employer for 2026.

A key element of that is a strong partnerships ecosystem that delivers commercial value, enhances our proposition, and accelerates the value our clients see on the ground. Therefore, we are now looking for a Head of Global Partnerships to architect, enable, lead that ecosystem, bringing Vault Core and Vault Payments to every bank and fintech on the planet.
As Global Head of Partnerships, you’ll lead a global team to enhance our partner ecosystem, creating a market-leading engine which gets our products live with our clients more efficiently, enhances the value our products have for our clients, and accelerates our overall growth in existing and new markets. A successful leader will possess strong commercial acumen and a hunger to deliver outstanding partner and client outcomes, but also a keen interest in the engineering behind our products in order to identify the best opportunities. As a manager of managers, we also look for people who have a passion for developing others.

Key duties:

• Ecosystem Strategy & Architecture: Identify and prioritise partnership categories, from global payment networks to AI-driven specialists, that enhance our competitive position and solve critical client needs.

• Commercial Deal Architecture: Design and negotiate high-stakes commercial agreements, including joint go-to-market (GTM) strategies and related revenue sharing and incentives that drive profitable ARR growth for Thought Machine and our partners.

• Commercial Enablement & GTM: Develop the playbooks and sales enablement tools required to turn joint-solutions into sellable product sets that accelerate sales cycles and open new territories.

• Team Leadership & Scaling: Manage and scale a high-performing team of five Partnership Managers, shifting the focus from "introductions" to "executed commercial outcomes" while building repeatable global processes.

• Market-Product Alignment: Collaborate with Product Leads to ensure that product partnerships and related third-party integrations are high-quality, reliable, and add immediate value to our core banking and payments products.

• Strategic Intelligence: Act as a primary feedback loop for the CPO, providing data-backed insights on market trends and competitor moves to inform "build-vs-buy-vs-partner" decisions.

• Partner Enablement & Quality Control: Establish and enforce "Vault-Certified" standards, defining the technical and operational benchmarks partners must meet to ensure confident and efficient deliveries, and working alongside others to structure and deliver programmes which help partners to be confident in selling or delivering our solutions.

• Regional Expansion: Develop and execute partnership plans that support our growth in North America, EMEA, LATAM and APAC, ensuring our ecosystem is not only strong globally, but also is localised and compliant to in-region requirements.

• Performance & ROI Optimisation: Implement a rigorous framework for tracking ecosystem health, focusing on metrics such as partner-influenced pipeline, integration adoption, and impact on customer time-to-value.

Who you are:

• Partnership Guru: Extensive experience in Partnerships, Business Development, or Product Strategy within Fintech or Enterprise SaaS. The best candidates will have experience across commercial, delivery and product partnerships, and exposure to the end-to-end cycle of originating a partner to delivering a partner-enabled solution to a client.

• Commercially Driven: You know when a partnership makes sense, strategically and commercially. When they do make sense, you know how to set the right incentives to deliver maximum value for both sides. You have a track record of closing complex, multi-million pound deals, understand how to align technical product roadmaps alongside partners, and know how to have the right conversations to move partnerships forward.

• Solution-Minded: You have a passion for financial technology and can identify which combination of Thought Machine and partner tech solves industry problems most efficiently, commercially and technically.

• Expert Navigator: You can effectively influence internal and external teams, exciting people about what’s possible, while simultaneously anticipating and navigating the procurement, legal, and risk hurdles inherent in deals in our industry.

• Effective Leader: You have experience managing and developing teams through rapid scale, focusing on clear accountability and the transition from a "deal-support" to a "market-making" model.

• A Master Communicator: You navigate high-level negotiations with global incumbents and agile startups alike, building trust through clarity and commercial logic.

Traits we value:

• Commercial Rigour: You prioritise opportunities based on ROI, market demand, and strategic impact.

• Ambitious Outlook: You are motivated by the challenge of replacing legacy banking tech and believe in the AI-powered future of finance.

• Metrics Driven: You are able to set and enforce leading, present, and lagging metrics on performance, both for our partners and our team

• Decisiveness: You are comfortable making high-stakes calls and moving at the pace of a Series E scale-up.

• Directness: You value transparency and provide clear, actionable insights to your team and your peers.

• Empowering: You know getting work done through others and developing others yields better results long term

Benefits:

• Highly competitive salary

• Pension plan (match up to 5%)

• Life insurance - three times annual salary

• Competitive maternity (six months fully paid) and paternity leave (four weeks fully paid)

• Shared parental leave (matched to our maternity leave for the same point in time)

• 25 days holiday and bank holidays

• Flexible working hours

• Cycle-to-work scheme

• Electric car scheme

• Season ticket loan

• Access to outstanding learning materials and courses

• Sports and hobby clubs, subsidised by Thought Machine

• All the latest tech you need

• Start the day properly with fresh fruit and cereals

• Huge range of healthy (and not-so-healthy) snacks, smooth

We actively hire candidates who demonstrate technical excellence in their field and welcome people of all ages and backgrounds, providing everyone with equal access to professional development. You are encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't accurately match the job description. We also encourage applications from those with different abilities, including candidates with ADHD, autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia.