Head of Institutional Partnerships, Celestia
$170-285k
Modular blockchain network
Be an early applicant
Modular blockchain network
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
$170-285k
21-100 employees
Company mission
To change the way that blockchains and decentralized applications are built—making them more secure, sovereign, and scalable.
Role
Who you are
- The ideal candidate brings a strong network across institutional crypto, fintech, and technology organizations and can navigate complex enterprise sales cycles with credibility and precision
- Based in New York City
- 7+ years of experience in enterprise sales, partnerships, or institutional business development, ideally within fintech, crypto, or adjacent technology sectors
- A strong existing network of institutional relationships across the digital asset or financial services landscape
- Demonstrated success in managing complex sales cycles and closing high-value partnerships
- Ability to communicate technical concepts (e.g., blockchain architecture) to both technical and non-technical audiences
- Self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and can work cross-functionally across global teams
- You’re motivated by building from the ground up and shaping how institutions engage with blockchain infrastructure
What the job involves
- The Celestia Labs Team is remote first and highly distributed, with English as our primary language for communication. We are looking for self-starters that are excited about working in a fast-paced startup environment
- Much of the team lives and works in the European timezones. As such, team members are expected to be available as needed for scheduled team meetings between the general hours of 1pm-6pm CET
- Celestia Labs is looking for an experienced Head of Institutional Partnerships to expand our institutional partnerships and enterprise relationships in the U.S and globally
- This role will focus on driving adoption of Celestia among financial institutions and large-scale enterprises seeking blockchain technology solutions for their business needs
- You’ll be responsible for originating, managing, and closing strategic partnerships that accelerate Celestia’s institutional presence
- You should be comfortable articulating Celestia’s product value proposition to a sophisticated audience and tailoring the narrative to institutional needs
- This role requires candidates to be based in New York City
- Develop and execute Celestia’s global institutional business development strategy
- Leverage your existing network to identify and engage institutional and enterprise partners - with a particular focus on fintechs and financial institutions such as banks, payment processors, asset managers, and exchanges - as well as other large-scale enterprises exploring blockchain integrations
- Manage the full sales and relationship lifecycle - from initial outreach to deal negotiation and post-launch relationship management
- Collaborate closely with the engineering, marketing, and BD teams to align institutional feedback with Celestia’s roadmap and positioning
- Represent Celestia at institutional and fintech conferences, including public speaking, to deepen engagement and visibility among financial and enterprise audiences
- Track market trends and competitive dynamics to identify new partnership opportunities
Our take
Blockchains are currently dominated by "monolithic" architecture. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major chains come as a single package, where every aspect of the chain is tied together. These are inflexible and difficult to customise or scale. Celestia aims to change this with its modular blockchain network, allowing developers to customise each component of the blockchain as needed without having to start from scratch each time.
Celestia's solution competes with the existing model of the larger blockchains, which are racing against one another to provide cheaper transactions. However, the strength of Celestia's decentralised approach is it can compete on fees while also allowing the far greater level of scalability demanded by Web3 applications. Additionally, it avoids the risks of outages that have plagued larger centralised blockchains.
Investors seem to agree with what Celestia is doing: it has completed a combined A and B Series funding round led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital. This funding brings its valuation over $1B and into unicorn status. Having initiated an initial testnet in 2022, the company plans to leverage capital to advance its project further.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Sep 2024
$100m
LATE VC
Oct 2022
$55m
SERIES B
Total funding: $156.5m
Company benefits
- Flexible and remote work environment
- Stipends for home office and coworking space
- Full-team onsites twice per year and smaller-team onsites more frequently
- Budget for conference attendance and professional development
- 4 weeks annual vacation
Company HQ
Vaduz, Vaduz
Leadership
Mustafa Al-Bassam
(CEO)Previously an Advisor at Nym and Secure Trading. Prior to this was co-founder and Researcher at Chainspace until its acquisition by Facebook.
Ismail Khoffi
(CTO)Previously a Senior Software Engineer at Informal Systems and Interchain Foundation. Before this, they were an External Evaluation Expert for the European Commission.
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