Head of Partnerships

What is Coast

Coast is re-imagining the trillion-dollar U.S. B2B card payments infrastructure, with a focus on the country's 500,000 commercial fleets, 40 million commercial vehicles, and many millions of commercial drivers. The incumbent technologies that cater to these customers are decades old, and businesses with fleets increasingly demand modern digital experiences and transparent financial services products. Coast's mission is to deliver this at a transformational scale, beginning with the Coast Fleet and Fuel Card built on a cutting-edge spend management platform.

About the Role

More and more of our best customers find us inside someone else's software. You'll own the function that makes that possible: Coast's Embedded and Channel Partnerships, one of the company's most important growth levers.

Coast is embedded natively in Samsara (NYSE: IOT). A fleet can sign up for Coast, set spend policies, and have transactions checked against live telematics data without leaving the Samsara platform. Samsara has called it their deepest fuel card integration yet, and it now sits at the center of the Fuel Command Center they launched in August. In July we shipped something similar with Fleetio, where fleet managers apply for and manage Coast cards inside Fleetio and every fuel and maintenance transaction posts automatically against the right vehicle. Underneath those two we have referral partners, resellers, and fleet management companies producing real volume, plus a pipeline of platform deals we haven't signed yet.

Customers who reach us this way close faster, cost far less to acquire, and tend to run bigger fleets.

We have the foundation of a channel that's poised to grow. Building one is the job: a second engine of growth alongside direct sales, reaching installed bases we could never call on ourselves.

You'll own it. That means sourcing and negotiating the next round of platform-scale distribution deals, activating the partnerships we already have so partner reps actually sell, and building a repeatable channel sales motion together with our Sales leadership. You'll lead a small team and continue to define the strategy and the playbook as we scale.

You'll report to Daniel Simon, our Founder and CEO.

What You'll Do

Own the channel as a business

• Own partner-sourced growth: pipeline, activated vehicles, revenue, and the CAC and payback numbers that determine whether the channel is worth running.
• Decide which categories of partner deserve our investment, across telematics and fleet management platforms, vertical and field service software, fleet management companies, resellers, associations and referral networks.
• Own the commercial model: revenue share, referral fees, minimum commitments, incentive structures, and the analysis that tells us what a partnership is worth before we sign it.
• Work out how Coast should be priced and packaged when it's sold inside someone else's product.

Strategize, source and close deals

• Own the full lifecycle of our partnerships: identifying and originating opportunities, and leading each one from the first conversation through to a signed agreement.
• Build relationships and presentations at the executive level.
• Partner closely with legal and finance to negotiate the terms that determine a deal's real value: exclusivity, term and termination, data rights, co-branding, service levels, and the marketing and sales commitments that decide whether a deal produces anything.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering to define what the integration should be.

Build the launch plan for new and expanded partnerships

• Build the launch plan: enablement, training, incentive design, co-marketing, in-product placement, and joint pipeline reviews. Signing is the easy part.
• Get partner sales teams fluent in Coast through on-site trainings, ride-alongs, SKO presence and field time, so their reps think of us in a live deal.
• Design the incentives that make selling Coast worth a partner rep's time, and test them before scaling them.
• Own the in-product activation funnel with Product and Marketing: how a partner's customer discovers Coast, applies, and starts spending.
• Put governance in place that holds up. Executive sponsors on both sides, a QBR cadence, shared KPIs, and an escalation path people use.

Build the channel sales motion with Sales

• Work with Sales leadership on how partner-sourced demand gets routed, worked and compensated, including how Coast AEs and partner reps co-sell without colliding.
• Build the plumbing with RevOps and Marketing: attribution, deal registration, referral submission, forecasting and reporting we can run the business on.
• Write down what works. Onboarding, enablement, co-sell, co-marketing, QBRs, tiering, and a clear process for fixing or ending the partnerships that don't produce.

Lead and grow the internal partnerships team

• Hire, develop and lead the partnerships organization as the channel scales.
• Represent the channel to the executive team and the board, with a point of view and honest numbers.

What Success Looks Like

By 90 days

• You've mapped the partner landscape and have a prioritized view of where the next order of magnitude of channel volume comes from.
• You know our existing partnerships in depth: the people, the incentives, the integration, the deal terms, and why each one is or isn't producing.
• You can run a Coast demo and pitch the partner value proposition to a partner's CRO without help.
• One existing partnership is measurably more productive than when you arrived, and you can say exactly what you changed.

By 6 months

• Partner-sourced pipeline is growing, with leading indicators we track and trust: active partners, trained partner reps, registered deals, partner-sourced opportunities.
• You've signed a significant new distribution partnership, or materially expanded an existing one, on terms you negotiated.
• An activation playbook exists and has been run more than once, so a new partnership has a known path from signature to revenue.
• Partner-sourced deals get routed, worked and attributed cleanly, and Sales treats the channel as help.

By 12 months

• The channel is a meaningful and growing share of new customer acquisition, at lower CAC and faster payback than direct.
• Several partnerships are producing at scale, so the channel isn't riding on one relationship.
• The motion runs on infrastructure and playbooks that keep working while you're on vacation.
• When the next platform in this market decides to embed payments, we get the call.

Requirements

• 10+ years in business development, embedded partnerships, or channel sales, ideally with at least one stretch where you owned distribution as a business: a number, unit economics you answered for, and real influence over product, pricing, and packaging.
• You've sourced, negotiated, and closed a large embedded or distribution partnership yourself: an integration, a revenue share, joint GTM commitments, and a long negotiation with a counterparty much bigger than you.
• You think in installed bases: how many of a partner's customers are reachable, through what surface, at what conversion, and what would move that number.
• Experienced at hiring and leading a partnerships team.
• You've worked alongside a direct sales organization and know how to keep a channel from turning into a fight over credit.
• Strong analytical instincts: comfortable pulling metrics, spotting trends, and translating data into operational decisions
• Strong relationship builder with excellent communication and presentation skills.
• AI-native mindset: you're already using AI tools in your daily work and you're excited to push further
• High ownership mindset: you proactively identify opportunities and drive them
• Organized and process-driven; able to manage multiple partners and workstreams with clarity.
• Ability to thrive in ambiguity and build structure to scale the function.
• Experience in fintech, payments, B2B SaaS, or financial services preferred
• Willingness to travel approximately 20% for partner meetings and tradeshows
• New York City based; able to be in-office 3–4 days per week

Compensation and Benefits

Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size and industry, and are one part of our total compensation package that also includes benefits and equity. Pay decisions are based on a number of factors, including scope and qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, and balancing internal equity relative to other Coast employees. We expect the majority of candidates who are offered roles at Coast to fall healthily within the range based on these factors.

Salary range: $190,000 – $250,000 annually, plus a performance based bonus opportunity depending on level determined during the interview process

Equity Grant: Meaningful potential upside given Coast's early-stage trajectory

Benefits Overview:

• Medical, dental and vision insurance
• Flexible paid time off (vacation, personal well being, paid holidays)
• Tools to help manage your financial wellness, including webinars, access to an equity tax advisory service, and company-sponsored 401(k)
• Paid parental leave
• $400 accessories allowance (a keyboard, mouse, headphones, etc.)
• Education stipend
• Free lunch every Friday

Coast is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are building a diverse and inclusive environment, so we encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. We're an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, disability, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Check out the latest podcast interview on Fintech Layer Cake with Coast Founder Daniel Simon!