Director, Channel Partnerships

Remote; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Remote is seeking a strategic Partnerships leader to own the referral channel across banks, VC funds, accounting firms, recruiters, and other partners. You will recruit, enable, and scale a high-potential partner network, build activation workflows, and drive co-sell initiatives with Sales and Marketing teams.

You will own the partner pipeline, guide governance, and lead a team to deliver repeatable, impactful outcomes for a rapidly growing company expanding across markets.

Qualifications

• Experience building scalable partnership motions.
• Commercial accountability with pipeline ownership.
• People leadership of a high-performing team.
• Trusted-advisor credibility with professional services firms and advisory networks.
• Strong business judgment and ability to prioritise.
• Operational rigor to turn ambiguity into repeatable processes.
• Experience with fast-growing companies and international hiring/payroll.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the referral/channel strategy across partner verticals and markets.
• Recruit, onboard, enable, and manage high-potential referral partners.
• Activate partners with scalable workflows, campaigns, and enablement assets.
• Own partner-sourced pipeline, bookings targets, forecasting, and performance.
• Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, RevOps, Legal, and Finance to operationalize partnerships.
• Develop high-value integrations and co-sell opportunities with key partners.
• Lead a team of channel partnership managers and set clear ownership and rhythms.

Skills

Partnership management

People leadership

Commercial accountability

Cross-functional execution

Trusted-advisor credibility

Business judgment

Operational rigor

Partner recruitment

Job description

• Set the referral channel strategy across partner verticals, customer segments, and markets.
• Identify which partners have genuine access to our target customers and a compelling reason to recommend Remote.
• Prioritize investment based on commercial potential, customer fit, speed to activation, and economics.
• Develop differentiated propositions for different partner types. A bank, VC fund, accounting firm, and recruiter will not all respond to the same playbook.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

Define Where We Play And How We Win

• Set the referral channel strategy across partner verticals, customer segments, and markets.
• Identify which partners have genuine access to our target customers and a compelling reason to recommend Remote.
• Prioritize investment based on commercial potential, customer fit, speed to activation, and economics.
• Develop differentiated propositions for different partner types. A bank, VC fund, accounting firm, and recruiter will not all respond to the same playbook.

Recruit and land high-potential partners

• Build a focused partner recruitment pipeline and lead the acquisition of high-potential referral partners.
• Develop relationships across VC funds and their portfolio support teams, banks, fintech platforms, accounting and advisory firms, HR consultants, fractional CFOs and CHROs, recruiters, and PEO and benefits brokers.
• Structure and negotiate agreements that create clear value and sustainable economics for both parties.
• Qualify for willingness and ability to generate business—not just willingness to sign an agreement.

Activate partners and make them productive

• Own the journey from partner signature through, prospecting, onboarding, enablement, support, first referral, first booking, commission payments, event sponsorships, and repeat production.
• Help partners recognize the customer situations that create an opportunity for Remote: international hiring, expansion into new markets, distributed teams, and payroll complexity.
• Build practical enablement, referral workflows, communications, and campaigns that make recommending Remote easy.
• Work with Partner Marketing on scalable activation and nurture programs, rather than relying on individual relationship management alone.
• Build trusted senior relationships with key partners and use structured business reviews to drive action.
• Reactivate partners with potential and stop investing in relationships that do not produce.
• Partner with Integrations, Solutions Consulting, and Sales teams to develop high-value integrations that strengthen referral channels and drive strategic co-selling.
• Collaborate with Field Marketing to boost demand generation attendance and execute joint GTM initiatives, including curated events and co-sponsored activities.
• Align with Corporate Marketing to amplify key partnerships, showcase customer success stories, and produce pipeline-generating content that elevates brand awareness and co-sell performance.

Own partner-sourced pipeline and bookings

• Own the team's partner-sourced pipeline and bookings targets, forecast, and performance.
• Work closely with Sales to ensure referrals are qualified, routed, followed up, and converted effectively.
• Identify where performance is blocked—partner engagement, referral quality, sales follow-up, customer fit, or commercial terms—and fix it.
• Establish clear rules for attribution and channel engagement. Distinguish genuinely partner-sourced business from activity that merely touches an existing opportunity.
• Track acquisition and servicing costs alongside revenue share to ensure channel growth is commercially sustainable.

Build a scalable operating model

• Turn successful experiments into repeatable playbooks for recruitment, onboarding, enablement, activation, and partner management.
• Work with RevOps to improve partner tracking, lead routing, reporting, and revenue-share processes.
• Segment the portfolio so high-touch management is reserved for partners that justify it, with programmatic support for the broader ecosystem.
• Use automation to reduce manual work and increase the team’s capacity to recruit and activate productive partners.

Lead and develop a high-performing team

• Hire, coach, and manage a team of channel partnership managers.
• Set clear ownership, targets, priorities, and operating rhythms.
• Coach the team to connect relationship-building with commercial outcomes.
• Stay close enough to partners and deals to understand what works. Lead from the front without becoming the bottleneck.

What you bring

• Experience building scalable partnership motions. You have built and improved a referral or channel business—not just managed an established portfolio.
• Commercial accountability. You have owned pipeline and bookings targets and can explain how your actions changed the number.
• People leadership. You have hired, coached, and managed a high-performing commercial team.
• Trusted-advisor credibility. You know how to build lasting relationships with professional services firms, advisors, and other organizations whose recommendations carry weight with customers.
• Strong business judgement. You can distinguish a prestigious partner from a productive one, and know where to invest time and resources.
• Operating rigor. You turn ambiguity into clear priorities, repeatable processes, and measurable outcomes.
• A builder’s mindset. You build new systems; you do not just operate within them. You know when to standardize and when a vertical needs a different approach.
• Experience with fast-growing companies. You understand how they buy, who influences their decisions, and how their international hiring and payroll needs evolve.
• Strong cross-functional execution. You work effectively with Sales, Marketing, RevOps, Legal, and Finance to make partnerships work in practice.
• EOR or global payroll experience is highly preferred. An established network across relevant referral partner verticals is a strong advantage.

What success looks like

• Consistent delivery against partner-sourced pipeline and bookings targets.
• A growing base of productive partners that generate qualified opportunities repeatedly—not just signed agreements.
• Faster activation: less time from signing a partner to their first qualified referral and first booking.
• Improving referral quality, conversion, and productivity per partner and per team member.
• A scalable channel motion with sustainable economics, clear attribution, and a strong partner experience.

You won’t be a fit if

• You measure success primarily by signed partners, meetings, or relationship sentiment.
• You expect to apply the same familiar playbook across every vertical.
• You want to set strategy but stay removed from partner recruitment, activation, and deal execution.
• You have only operated within mature programs and have not built a motion yourself.

Practicals

• You’ll report to: GM & VP Partnerships
• Direct Reports: 5-6
• Location: AMER preferred
• Travel: Regular travel expected