Partnerships Manager

About the role

As a founding member of Valon's GTM team, you'll work side by side with our founding Strategic Account Executive and founding Sales Engineer from first conversation through close and into deployment. You'll lead the relationship layer of high-stakes, multi-stakeholder enterprise deals: mapping the buying committee, building trust with executive sponsors, securing the right partners and integrations, and making sure every commitment made in the sales cycle is carried through. It's a highly strategic, relationship-driven role that rewards judgment, follow-through, and the ability to build structure where none exists yet.

Who you are

An entrepreneurial partnerships or strategic-relationship professional who thrives in early-stage environments and is energized by building from the ground up.

A track record of managing complex, high-value enterprise relationships where trust, timing, and execution matter as much as the contract.

A strong relationship-builder who earns credibility with stakeholders at every level, from operators to the C-suite, and builds consensus across large organizations.

A genuine partner to Sales and Sales Engineering who takes ownership of revenue goals and the role you play in hitting them.

Able to quickly grasp complex technical and regulatory concepts and communicate them clearly to diverse audiences.

A self-starter with excellent organizational skills, sound judgment under pressure, and relentless follow-through.

A systems builder who turns one-off wins into documented, repeatable processes.

Responsibilities

Partner with our Strategic AE, Sales Engineer, and executives from early discovery through close and into implementation, owning the relationship strategy for each strategic account.

Map stakeholders and buying committees (executive, operations, technical, legal, security, procurement, compliance) and build multi-threaded relationships across each account.

Develop and run account and partnership plans: executive sponsor alignment, mutual success plans, joint milestones, and risk tracking across 6-12 month enterprise cycles.

Identify, evaluate, and build strategic partnerships (technology, data, and service providers, industry associations, and channel partners) that accelerate deals and extend Valon's reach in the mortgage ecosystem.

Serve as the connective tissue between Sales, Sales Engineering, Product, Implementation, and Legal to keep complex deals moving, and keep customers moving after signature.

Run executive touchpoints, steering committees, and business reviews with enterprise clients; prepare leadership for high-stakes meetings.

Support commercial and contracting workstreams alongside Sales and Legal, including partner agreements, referral and co-sell structures, and pricing and terms guardrails.

Own the handoff from sale to deployment, ensuring commitments made during the sales cycle are carried through and early customer success is visible and documented.

Surface expansion and cross-sell opportunities within existing relationships and partner them with the AE on strategy and timing.

Translate customer and partner feedback into product input, case studies, references, and reusable GTM assets.

Build and document the partnerships and relationship-management playbooks, processes, and reporting that scale with the growing team.

Represent Valon at industry conferences, partner events, and client sites.

Travel to clients and partners 25% of the time.

Qualifications

5-10+ years in partnerships, strategic alliances, enterprise account management, business development, or client relationship roles, with evidence of owning high-stakes, complex enterprise relationships.

Experience supporting enterprise software, financial services, or other regulated-industry deals involving executive, technical, legal, security, procurement, and compliance stakeholders.

Proven ability to build C-suite trust and navigate multi-threaded buying committees and long, complex sales cycles.

Experience structuring and negotiating partner or commercial agreements in partnership with Legal and Finance.

Strong technical and operational fluency: able to understand integrations, data movement, implementation risk, and workflow transformation well enough to align stakeholders.

Excellent written and verbal communication, including executive-level presentation and facilitation.

High agency in ambiguous, founder-led, zero-to-one GTM environments.

Ability and desire to learn mortgage deeply; prior mortgage or mortgage-technology experience is helpful but not required.