About First Digital and Finance District
First Digital is a Hong Kong-headquartered fintech and digital assets group, increasingly focused on the emerging AI and agentic economy. Our businesses include digital asset custody and trust services through First Digital Trust Limited, the FDUSD stablecoin issued by First Digital Labs, and Finance District — our Web3-native financial ecosystem at fd.xyz.
Finance District is a comprehensive on-chain financial ecosystem powered by FDUSD and governed by FDFI. Its products include Prism (the agentic payments backend), Agent Wallet, District Pass, the FDFI token, and Kredible. With over $2 trillion in cumulative transaction volume across the broader FDUSD network and integration across six major blockchains, Finance District sits at the intersection of stablecoin infrastructure, AI agents, and the next-generation digital economy.
Role Purpose
The Ecosystem Partnerships Lead owns the strategic and channel partnerships that drive long-term ecosystem growth for Finance District. You build and run the relationships with the platforms, foundations, and infrastructure partners that turn Finance District from a product into an ecosystem.
You operate with a technical lens. You can read partner documentation, scope integrations with their engineering teams, and translate between Finance District’s capabilities and a partner’s roadmap. You are not running a transactional volume motion — that sits with the Growth function.
You are creating durable value: signed integrations, foundation grants, co-marketing alliances, and category-defining partnerships that compound over years.
This is a founding partnership role. You will define partnership strategy alongside the Finance District Lead and execute it in market.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Partnerships
- Build and run partnerships across our priority categories: e-commerce platforms (Shopify, Medusa, headless commerce stacks); the startup and accelerator community; and blockchain foundations focused on agentic payments use cases
- Originate, structure, and close partnership agreements — integration deals, co-marketing partnerships, foundation grants, and strategic alliances
- Identify and pursue emerging partnership opportunities as the agentic economy takes shape
- Hand off transactional volume opportunities to the Growth function with clean briefing
Technical Integration Leadership
- Scope integrations with partner engineering teams; understand and represent Finance District’s API surface (Prism, Agent Wallet, FDUSD across six chains) credibly
- Read partner technical documentation, smart contracts, and roadmaps; identify integration paths and counterparty risks
- Coordinate internal product and engineering resources around prioritised partner integrations
- Run technical due diligence on inbound and outbound partnership opportunities
Foundation and Ecosystem Programs
- Build and maintain relationships with blockchain foundations where Finance District is or could be deployed
- Pursue and manage foundation grant opportunities
- Co-design ecosystem programs (hackathon tracks, builder grants, joint developer events) with partners
Public Representation
- Represent Finance District at industry events — Token2049, Devcon, Consensus, Web Summit, regional builder events, foundation summits
- Speak on panels, host partner sessions, and act as a credible technical voice for Finance District in partner ecosystems
Internal Alignment
- Work with the Growth function to ensure clean handoffs between strategic partnerships and transactional motion
- Surface partner-driven product requirements and roadmap input to the Finance District Lead and product team
- Maintain partner CRM hygiene and quarterly partnership reporting
Required Experience
- 8+ years in business development, strategic partnerships, or ecosystem roles at a crypto, fintech, payments, or developer-tools company
- Demonstrated track record of originating and closing strategic partnerships from cold — named partnerships you built end-to-end, not partnerships handed to you
- Deep working knowledge of crypto and Web3 — smart contracts, wallets, AMMs, custody, bridging, stablecoins. Familiarity with AI agents and the agentic economy is a strong plus
- Strong technical fluency. You can read code and partner documentation, scope an integration with an engineering team, and represent Finance District’s API surface to a CTO without needing a Solutions Architect to ride along
- Existing network in the Web3 ecosystem (foundations, protocols, infrastructure) and ideally in the commerce ecosystem (e-commerce platforms, payments)
- Global perspective. You have worked across APAC, EU, and US ecosystems, or are clearly capable of doing so
- Experience representing a company publicly at major industry events
What We Offer
- FDFI token allocation with multi-year vesting
- A hands-on role at the intersection of stablecoins, AI agents, and the on-chain economy
- Direct mentorship from the Finance District Lead
- A clear path to the Growth Lead role for strong performers as the function scales