Director of Strategic Partnerships - Circle

About Us

Circle is building the world’s leading AI-powered, all-in-one platform for digital businesses. We make it possible for creators, coaches, educators, and businesses to bring together their audience with engaging discussions, live streams, events, chat, courses, and payments — all in one place, all under their own brand.

We’re proud to be a fully remote company of around 270 team members from 30+ countries around the world. We collaborate across time zones, are highly async, and twice a year, we bring the whole company together in beautiful places around the world for our company offsites.

About the Role

The Director of Strategic Partnerships will lead the strategy, growth, and performance of Circle's partnerships function, building programs and relationships that strengthen Circle's brand while driving meaningful business outcomes.

This role sits at the intersection of business development, partnerships, creators, content, and growth. You'll be responsible for translating Circle's broader company priorities into a forward-looking partnerships strategy, identifying where and how we invest, developing our most important creator and strategic relationships, and ensuring those investments translate into measurable impact across customer growth, brand awareness, and market position.

You'll also build the systems, team, and operating model required to scale the function, moving successful initiatives from one-off execution into repeatable programs that can grow without depending on a single person to drive every detail.

Reporting to our SVP, Ecosystem, you'll work closely with Circle's founders and leadership team, as well as teammates across Community Growth, Media, Demand Generation, Product Marketing, and our Design Studio.

What You'll Be Doing

• Own Circle's Partnerships strategic planning and roadmap, connecting partnership investments to company priorities and measurable business outcomes.
• Take ownership of the function's contribution to new business and other agreed performance goals.
• Build repeatable partnership programs and playbooks that allow successful initiatives such as webinars, challenges, creator campaigns, launches, and event activations to scale.
• Develop a forward-looking quarterly and annual partnership plan across creator partnerships, strategic relationships, campaigns, launches, and events.
• Lead Circle's highest-value creator and strategic partnerships, including relationship development, opportunity identification, deal strategy, negotiation, creative direction, and long-term growth.
• Shape the content and creative strategy behind major partnerships, working closely with partners to develop ideas authentic to their audience and effective for Circle.
• Bring a strong marketing mindset into partnership development, including offer strategy, audience journeys, and conversion opportunities.
• Establish clear measurement, reporting, and decision-making frameworks for the function using performance and qualitative insights.

What You'll Need to Be Successful

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills in English (CEFR C2 or equivalent).
• 10+ years of experience building 6-7 figure strategic partnerships, creator programs, brand initiatives, or strategic growth programs within SaaS, technology, or the creator economy.
• Strong business development skills including pipeline management, negotiation, partner development, and cross-functional project management.
• Performance marketing instincts and an understanding of how partnerships drive brand value and measurable business outcomes.
• Deep understanding of Circle's customers, the creator economy, and the broader market.
• Exceptional content and creative instincts with a track record of turning successful one-off initiatives into repeatable programs and playbooks.
• Strong strategic planning skills and the ability to translate ambiguous, cross-functional situations into clear strategy.
• Experience managing and developing a team through senior managers or managers-of-managers.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills and the ability to influence senior stakeholders across teams.

Compensation & Benefits

Circle offers U.S.-benchmarked compensation globally, equity in the company with ongoing refresh grants, and 35 days of paid time off each year, alongside a benefits package supporting health, wellbeing, and professional growth.