Who you are

- 10+ years of experience in strategic partnerships, fintech BD, product strategy, or payments consulting

- Understanding of the payments ecosystem—issuers, processors, card networks, wallets, and commerce platforms

- Ability to connect technical product functionality with partner and market needs

- Demonstrated success managing complex partnerships and cross-functional projects

- Comfortable in ambiguous, fast-paced environments with shifting priorities and emerging technologies

- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a strategic mindset and a bias toward execution

- Experience working closely with product or engineering teams in a platform company or fintech infrastructure provider, especially in an innovative and fast paced startup environment

- Familiarity with tokenization, payment flows, reconciliation processes, or data compliance frameworks

- Technical literacy (e.g., comfortable discussing APIs, SDKs, and integration workflows)

What the job involves

- The Director, Strategic Partnerships – Payments & Product will lead the expansion of VGS's strategic partner ecosystem - building relationships with card networks, investors, cloud providers, and emerging payments infrastructure players that directly shape our product strategy and platform capabilities

- This role blends external partner engagement with internal product collaboration

- You’ll help shape our product roadmap by bringing ecosystem insights and partnership-led opportunities to life - whether through expanding our card network services, accelerating agentic tokens, or other innovative initiatives

- Lead and develop a team of Strategic Partnerships professionals, including direct reports, setting clear priorities, coaching performance,



and building the team’s capabilities as VGS’s partnership portfolio and strategic mandate expand

- Own and grow a portfolio of VGS’s most strategic partnerships across payments and commerce technology, including card networks, investors, cloud and infrastructure providers, AI platforms, wallets, processors, and other ecosystem partners

- Develop and execute partnership strategies that advance VGS’s company and product priorities, identifying where external partners can accelerate growth, strengthen product differentiation, or open new markets and distribution channels

- Lead complex, product-oriented partnerships that require deep coordination across Product, Engineering, Legal, Sales, and Executive Leadership, translating strategic opportunities into executable commercial and technical plans

- Source, evaluate, prioritize, and develop new strategic partnerships, with a focus on opportunities that can materially influence VGS’s product roadmap, competitive positioning, or long-term growth

- Lead negotiations for strategic commercial and product agreements, including defining partnership structures, economics, go-to-market models, technical commitments, and mutual success criteria

- Drive partnerships from initial strategy and business case through negotiation, launch, commercialization, and ongoing relationship management





- Build senior-level relationships with partner executives and serve as a trusted strategic counterpart, identifying opportunities to expand the partnership and proactively addressing risks or areas of misalignment

- Establish clear goals, operating rhythms, and success metrics for key partnerships, holding both VGS and partners accountable for execution and measurable outcomes

- Act as the voice of strategic partners within VGS, bringing external market insights, partner priorities, and ecosystem developments into product and company decision-making

- Influence VGS’s broader corporate and product strategy by developing a point of view on the evolution of tokenization, payments infrastructure, agentic commerce, AI, and next-generation commerce technologies

- Identify emerging ecosystem shifts and translate them into actionable recommendations for VGS, including potential new products, partnerships, distribution models, and strategic initiatives

- Represent VGS externally with senior leaders across the payments and technology ecosystem, strengthening VGS’s position as a strategic infrastructure partner for the next generation of commerce

Benefits

- Competitive health benefits including medical, dental, & vision insurance

- VGS stock options
- 401k plan, with employer matching 4% and immediate vesting of employer match

- Life & disability insurance

- Pre-tax flexible spending accounts (dependent and healthcare FSA)

- Flexible work hours and flexible PTO

- 11 US company holidays

- Eligibility for health benefits starts on Day 1!

- Current hire home office set up allowance

- Professional learning reimbursement

📌 Director of Strategic Partnerships (Canada)
🏢 Very Good Security
📍 Canada