Head of Partnerships

OuterSignal Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

OuterSignal is building a partner-led growth engine for ecommerce, focusing on agency partnerships across retention/CRM, performance, CRO, and creator networks. You’ll own the agency partner program end-to-end, scale referral and ecosystem partnerships, and be the named owner of this channel — accountable for qualified introductions and partner-sourced revenue.

You’ll collaborate with Shopify and the broader DTC ecosystem, run partner events, webinars, and co-marketing efforts, and report

Job description

About OuterSignal

We are building the customer intelligence and personalization layer for commerce. Businesses know when an order comes in or a user signs up, but they only see 5% of the real story. We show them the other 95%: not just who’s transacting, but who that person actually is — the execs, influencers, journalists, retail buyers, investors, and everyday customers who become a brand’s best evangelists. Our platform enriches every order in real time with professional and personal signals, builds personas, and powers everything from surprise-and-delight outreach to smarter email flows, analytics, and BD leads. We’re a small, high-performing team building the category-defining platform for e-commerce customer intelligence, backed by a world-class investor base.

The Opportunity

The market is already buzzing about OuterSignal. We’re picking up inbound customer and agency leads daily — agencies want to bring us to their clients, adjacent tools want to swap referrals, customers tell their friends, and platform partner managers want a counterpart. Now we’re scaling that energy into a formal program that we believe can be one of our highest-impact channels.

You will be that owner. This is a build-and-run seat: the agency partner program is designed, documented, and producing — you take it over, scale it, and expand the mandate into tech/ecosystem partnerships and our customer referral engine. You are the named answer to “who’s your head of partnerships?”

You will be managed to a number. The channel’s job is to fill our sales team’s calendar with qualified introductions and to grow the share of revenue that partners source. If that excites you rather than scares you, keep reading.

What You’ll Do

The agency partner program (the day-one motion)

• Hunt and open agency partnerships across retention/CRM, performance, CRO, and creator agencies — working a qualified target list and a codified stage-gate playbook, from founder buy-in down to the hands-on-keyboard strategists who actually recommend tools.

• Account-manage every signed agency: explicit per-agency goals, a weekly cadence, a clear productivity bar, and the discipline to restructure or end partnerships that don’t produce.

• Feed the sales team. Qualified intros flow to AEs; you’re measured on filling their funnels, not on closing their deals.

• Uphold the commercial machinery and discipline: rev-share administration, partner tagging, clean attribution, and commission inputs — on rails RevOps has already built.

• Own the lifecycle beyond the first deal: lead-backs to partners, the incentive ladder, and partner tiering as the program scales.

The referral engine

• Own the customer referral program as a first-class demand channel — design, incentives, and growth — alongside the partner motion it lives next to.

• Own how partner- and referral-sourced leads get routed to reps, so speed-to-lead stays fast and credit stays clean.

Tech & ecosystem partnerships

• Be the named counterpart for every inbound partnership conversation — qualify fast, structure referral swaps, and drive install-button / marketplace / co-referral deals with adjacent tools in the commerce stack.

• Build durable relationships inside the platforms that matter (Shopify, Klaviyo, and the ecosystem around them) — especially with the practitioners and partner managers who drive real recommendations.

Events, with a partner lens

• Own the partner angle on our event presence: co-hosted dinners, partner-side webinars, agency presence at trade shows. (The events calendar itself belongs to Marketing.)

How We’ll Measure You

Two numbers, glanceable:

1. Qualified introductions per month sourced from the partner and referral channel.

2. Partner-sourced closed-won revenue — the share of new bookings associated with a partner.

Everything else (agencies signed, active-vs-dormant ratio, tech deals structured) is diagnostic.

Who You Are

• You’ve run this exact motion before. You sold agencies on becoming partners, then managed a book of them as their de-facto sales coach, and ideally built or scaled a partner program from scratch. You’re not learning this on our dime — you’re executing a motion you already know cold.

• You know how to schmooze — and you know how to close. Relationship warmth is table stakes; what we’re hiring is deal mechanics. When something stalls, your instinct is “what can we do — how do we rework this?” not another coffee.

• You’re comfortable being goaled hard. You want a number, and you want the autonomy that comes with owning it.

• You can hold multiple partner types at once. Agencies are the day-one motion, but you can context-switch to a tech referral swap or a platform relationship without dropping the thread.

• You have existing relationships in the Shopify and DTC agency world.

What We Offer

• Impact: Join at the ground floor where your work directly influences company trajectory

• Ownership: A whole channel that’s yours to build, with a number attached and the autonomy to hit it

• Growth: Rapid company growth creates exceptional learning and advancement opportunities

• Team: Work alongside the founding team

• Mission: Revolutionizing the way brands understand and market to their customers

OuterSignal is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.