Our Purpose

At Xero, we’re here to help you supercharge your business. We do this by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights and connecting businesses with the right data, advisors and apps. When that happens, we’re not only making life better for small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

As a Partnerships Director, you will lead the development of unique strategies to attain, invest-in and grow relationships with Xero’s key partners. As Xero evolves its portfolio of services regionally and globally, you will support Xero’s product groups to deliver world class, disruptive solutions to Xero’s customers and partners.

What you’ll do

• Lead the evaluation of potential options for growth, capability expansion and commercial arrangements by assessing the impact to the broader Xero environment, offering strategic insights and advice to senior stakeholders
• Lead a variety of product and distribution deals, working closely with Xero product and GTM teams
• Negotiate terms from end-to-end, including business case modeling and iterating on negotiations
• Develop a strategy focussed on developing new and existing partnerships to support Xero’s priorities
• Gathering feedback and consensus from Product teams, to inform future details
• Orchestrate engagement with Xero’s key partners with regional and global partnerships teams
• Develop partnering best-practices, by working closely with other domain experts and senior leaders across Xero
• Work with the broader partnerships and operations functions to implement and improve the systems and processes upon which the partnering team depends
• Act as the conduit between Partnerships and the technical areas related to the partnership domain
• Provide guidance and mentorship to other team members focusing on areas relating to deal development and execution that you’ve seen work well throughout your career

Success looks like

• Deliver high quality partner arrangements that materially contribute to company OKRs
• Support delivery of key Xero events and marketing initiatives
• A strong pipeline of new opportunities across acquisition, retention and growth of new partnership relationships
• Commercial return on key partners or initiatives (core or ancillary revenue, customer growth as well as commitment and execution from strategic partners on marketing and brand building initiatives)
• Versatility across partnership pillars as/where required by the business.
• Provide thought leadership to the internal and external community
• Quality and value of partnership measured in revenue, customer growth, and brand uplift

What you’ll bring with you

• Experience in leading projects and directing high-performing matrixed teams
• Significant business development experience and directly in high-risk situations to resolve complex issues and build trust and consensus
• The ability to influence and drive revenue opportunities
• An ability to deliver change in a fast paced dynamic environment experiencing growth and expansion
• Extensive regional FinTech and technology industry knowledge, contacts and networks or related experience in the accounting or business technology fields, with a focus in B2B or B2B2C organizations
• Extensive experience, in building business cases and leading complex, cross-functional strategy initiatives – including engagement with senior business leaders
• Knowledge of Xero’s business and exposure to Partnerships a distinct advantage
• Proven negotiation skills, persuasive ability and excellent communication skills.
• Negotiates and communicates effectively and assertively in high-risk situations to resolve complex issues and build consensus
• The ability to influence and drive revenue opportunities
• An ability to cope with and deliver change in a fast paced dynamic environment experiencing growth and expansionExtensive regional FinTech and Technology industry knowledge, contacts and networks
• Proven ability to understand the needs and agenda of P&L leaders in large, global companies and jointly meet objectives through partnerships

Why Xero?

Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, health insurance, life insurance, and income protection, wellbeing and sports programmes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, career development, and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.