Director at Manulife managing strategic partnerships, vendor contracting, and performance oversight. Leading vendor negotiations and relationship management ensuring alignment with business objectives.
About the role
- Director of Strategic Partnerships owning partnership strategy to enhance client value at Reward Gateway. Leading multi-disciplinary teams to drive sustained commercial growth in the UK.
Responsibilities
- Design and execute a strategic partnership model that elevates client outcomes and strengthens RG’s competitive position.
- Deepen our presence in priority sectors such as Telco, Finance, Insurance, Retail, Learning & Development, and lifestyle benefits.
- Build a partner ecosystem that delivers value, innovation, and differentiation for all UK clients.
- Strengthen RG’s ability to scale through co-marketing, channel distribution, and joint propositions.
- Ensure partner quality, compliance, and operational excellence reflect our brand and customer commitments.
- Own commercial negotiation, partner economics, rebates, margin, and performance reporting.
- Build joint business plans with strategic partners to fuel new business and upsell growth.
- Monitor partner contribution to pipeline, ACV, client adoption, and retention.
- Work closely with Sales, CS, Product, and Marketing to embed partnerships across the full customer lifecycle.
- Shape GTM plans where partners enhance proposition, vertical strategy, and client outcomes.
- Represent partnership insights in leadership forums to inform roadmap, pricing, and strategy.
- Lead a multi-disciplinary partnership team (Channel, Benefits, Partner Success, Operations).
- Build a high-performance culture focused on delivery, accountability, and innovation.
- Develop capability, succession, and strong internal collaboration within the team.
- Ensure partners meet compliance, data protection, financial, and service-level obligations.
- Oversee risk assessments, contracting, onboarding processes, and operational integration.
- Maintain strong governance frameworks to protect clients, employees, and brand.
Requirements
- Proven experience in partnerships, commercial strategy, ecosystem development, or category management.
- Demonstrated experience of successfully leading multi-disciplinary commercial teams.
- Strong commercial and negotiation experience, with a track record of securing high-value partnerships.
- Previous experience working across SaaS, digital marketplaces, financial services, reward/lifestyle benefits, or B2B2C environments (preferred).
- Demonstrable success embedding partnerships into GTM or customer lifecycle programmes.
- Strategic leadership – proven ability to define long-term partnership vision and deliver executional excellence.
- Commercial acumen - financially fluent with strong negotiation capability.
- Cross-functional influencing – demonstrated ability to align Product, Marketing, CS, Sales, and Operations.
- Operational discipline - strong governance, process, and risk management.
- Customer empathy - understands how partnerships shape customer adoption, retention, and value.
- People leadership - builds high-performing teams and strong internal relationships.
Benefits
- A flexible holiday plan of up to 40 days per year
- £400 a year Wellbeing Allowance
- Private Medical Insurance
- Allowance for professional development books, E-books, and podcasts
- Contributory pension scheme
- Employee, friends and family discounts across 1200+ retail, hospitality and lifestyle brands
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