Head of Partnerships

Life @ AP+:

We are one connected team in pursuit of one inspiring purpose - to unite people and technology to power better experiences. Each of us has a part to play in making that happen. You’ll be encouraged to bring your big ideas forward and make a difference through your work. Taking steps forward in your career whilst still having room for fun, friendships, and flexibility in your daily life.

We’re driven by our core values: lead with heart, learn for tomorrow and live our legacy. A purpose like ours takes the inspired impact of an incredible team. Ready to change the game? We’re ready to help you do it.

The Purpose:

This is a senior commercial leadership role at the centre of how AP+ builds and grows strategic partnerships. As Head of Partnerships, you’ll set and lead the partnership strategy, build high-value, long-term relationships with key partners and stakeholders, and turn opportunity into sustainable commercial and customer value. You’ll operate across AP+ and with senior external stakeholders to shape significant proposals, lead complex negotiations and investment decisions, and ensure our partnerships deliver measurable outcomes aligned to AP+’s broader strategy.

Key Responsibilities the Role Owns:

• Set the direction for AP+’s partnership strategy and translate organisational priorities into a clear portfolio of strategic partnership opportunities and plans.

• Build, influence and steward senior-level relationships with key partners and stakeholders, positioning AP+ as a trusted, long-term strategic partner.

• Identify, assess and prioritise opportunities based on strategic fit, business demand, commercial value and AP+’s capacity to deliver.

• Lead significant commercial discussions, proposals and negotiations with senior customer and partner representatives, including contractual and commercial outcomes.

• Shape investment appraisals and business cases, establish success measures and maintain a clear view of the value, performance and benefits delivered through partnerships.

• Lead and develop a high-performing team while aligning partnership, sales and customer engagement activity across AP+ to strengthen customer loyalty and lifetime relationship value.

You’ll likely be a strong fit for this role if:

• Deep Payments experience within a payment scheme or financial institution in areas such as Issuing, Acquiring, or Account to Account payments.

• You’re an established senior leader with significant experience shaping strategic partnerships, business development and commercial strategy in complex organisations.

• You have a strong track record of building credibility and influence with executive-level customers, partners and stakeholders, and of creating mutually valuable long-term relationships.

• You’ve led complex commercial negotiations and significant proposals, with the judgement to balance strategic, customer, commercial and organisational considerations.

• You can move comfortably between strategy and execution - assessing opportunities, developing investment cases, measuring benefits and ensuring partnerships translate into tangible outcomes.

• You bring strong commercial acumen across partnership strategy, sales, investment appraisal, benefits management and performance measurement.

• You’re an experienced people leader who can set direction, build capability and performance, and bring cross-functional teams together around shared commercial and customer outcomes.

What happens next:

At AP+, we believe in the power of passion, pride and purpose. Our team is driven by a shared mission to make a difference in the world of payments, and we're proud to work together towards this common goal.

If you’re a senior partnerships leader who can see where strategic relationships can create meaningful value and has the commercial leadership, influence and judgement to turn that opportunity into impact, we’d love to hear from you.

If you’re ready to be a game changer, please submit your application. The Talent Acquisition team will endeavour to review your application and notify you of the outcome within the next two weeks.

We want to remove all barriers to inclusion, so if you need advice or support with your application, we’re here to help. Please reach out to [email protected]. We also encourage you to let us know your pronouns at any point during the recruitment process.

AP+ are not partnering with Recruitment agencies for this role.