Head of Strategic Partnerships, Human Interest
$700k
OTE
$350k
BASE
+ Equity
Expert level
Remote from US
Full-service 401(k) plans for SMBs
Be an early applicant
Full-service 401(k) plans for SMBs
501-1000 employees
FintechB2BFinancial ServicesSaaSSocial Impact
Be an early applicant
$700k
OTE
$350k
BASE
+ Equity
Expert level
Remote from US
501-1000 employees
FintechB2BFinancial ServicesSaaSSocial Impact
Company mission
Human Interest's mission is to ensure that people in all lines of work have access to retirement benefits.
Role
Who you are
- Partnerships & Business Development Expertise: 10+ years in partnerships, business development, or channel sales, with a track record of personally owning and growing a book of strategic partnerships
- Leadership Experience: 5+ years experience building, coaching, and scaling high-performing teams, with a track record of enabling others to achieve revenue targets
- Proven Dealmaking: Demonstrated history of sourcing, structuring, and closing complex, high-value partnership and distribution agreements with measurable revenue impact
- Domain Fluency: Deep experience in fintech, retirement / wealth, payroll, benefits, or an adjacent financial-services ecosystem, with a working understanding of how these distribution channels actually buy and sell
- Cross-Functional Influence: A proven ability to mobilize Product, Engineering, Marketing, Legal, and Sales around a partnership without direct authority over those teams
- Executive Presence: Ability to negotiate with and present to senior executives, both internally and across partner organizations, with confidence and credibility
- Builder's Mindset: Thrives in a fast-paced, scaling environment; brings structure to ambiguity and is energized by standing up new motions from scratch
- Analytical Rigor: Strong commercial and financial instincts: able to model channel economics and make sharp prioritization calls about where to invest
- Values-Driven: A deep alignment with Human Interest's core principles, especially Customer Obsession, Long-Term Orientation, and Leading with Autonomy
- Strategic Organizational Scaling: Ability to design and operationalize partnership processes that scale beyond a single contributor, ensuring consistent growth and partner success
What the job involves
- The Head of Strategic Partnerships owns a vital piece of Human Interest's most important growth channel: expanding our ecosystem of partners who put our retirement platform in front of millions of small and medium-sized businesses
- Reporting directly to the Chief Revenue Officer, you will lead the team to identify, pursue, and close strategic partnerships across payroll providers, benefits brokers, accountants, financial institutions, PEOs, and embedded fintech distribution
- This is a leadership role focused on building, scaling, and driving the strategic partnership ecosystem
- While hands-on, the focus is on organizational strategy, team mentorship, and driving cross-functional success
- You will be responsible for signing complex, multi-year agreements with some of Human Interest’s largest and most important partners
- The role is equal parts strategist, dealmaker, and operator
- You'll be just as comfortable modeling the economics of a new channel as you are in a room negotiating terms, and just as effective driving a deal across the finish line as you are shaping the partnership thesis with the CRO and the broader leadership team
- The person who thrives here is a natural hunter — energized by the pursuit of net-new relationships, comfortable opening doors cold, and relentless about carrying complex, multi-stakeholder deals through long sales cycles
- You bring executive presence and the systems thinking to see how a single partnership fits into a broader distribution strategy
- You read a term sheet and a partnership thesis with equal fluency, you make sharp prioritization calls about where to spend your time, and you carry deals with a sense of ownership
- Above all, you are a builder: you're drawn to the ambiguity of standing up new channels from scratch, and you bring structure, pace, and judgment to a function that is still writing its own playbook
- About the team
- The Partnerships organization is the engine behind Human Interest's reach, with over 95% of our business coming from our partner ecosystem
- This team builds the relationships that let us scale access to retirement benefits far faster than we could one employer at a time
- They think in systems and incentives: which partners share our mission, how we make those partners successful, and how we design programs that compound over time
- The team works shoulder-to-shoulder with Sales, Product, Marketing, Legal, and Operations to establish and launch partnerships that are commercially sound, operationally clean, and genuinely good for the businesses we ultimately serve
- As we continue to scale, we're looking for a leader who can take this function to its next level: bigger partners, deeper integrations, and a measurable line on the revenue plan
- Team Leadership & Mentorship: Coach, mentor, and develop a high-performing team of partnership professionals, fostering a culture of ownership, strategic thinking, and high-quality deal execution
- Strategic Organizational Scaling: Design and implement scalable partnership processes, playbooks, and systems that allow the team to efficiently manage growth and long-term partner success
- Partnership Strategy: Shape and own the strategy for your portfolio of partnerships, prioritizing the channels, partner types, and deals that drive the highest-quality growth, in close partnership with the VP of Partnerships
- Sourcing & Closing: Act as a primary “hunter” for the organization; while guiding the team, you will remain hands-on in identifying, pursuing, and opening net-new strategic partnerships across payroll, benefits brokers, and financial institutions, personally leading high-stakes negotiations to close complex deals
- Performance Management: Set clear performance metrics and KPIs for the team, tracking progress and providing regular feedback to ensure the team consistently meets and exceeds revenue targets
- Deal Structuring & Execution: Lead commercial negotiation and deal structuring end-to-end, while empowering team members to lead negotiations on key accounts. Partner with Legal and Finance to protect the business
- Cross-Functional Influence: Partner with Product, Engineering, Marketing, Legal, and Sales to scope integrations, build co-marketing enablement, and operationalize partner-sourced demand
- Executive Communication: Translate the partnership thesis, pipeline, and results into clear narratives for the VP of Partnerships and senior leadership, and represent Human Interest externally with senior partner stakeholders
- Market Intelligence: Maintain a sharp view of the retirement, payroll, fintech, and benefits landscape, surfacing competitive and regulatory shifts that should shape the partnership roadmap
Our take
Human Interest is a company offering 401(k) for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). SMBs have historically been unable to afford benefits for employees, leaving around 40 million Americans without a retirement plan. Human Interest is helping to change this with its platform that has eliminated all 401(k) transaction fees.
The company has seen strong adoption from businesses that have not previously had retirement benefits, including construction, retail, and hospitality - making waves in its target market. Its successes so far have allowed Human Interest to sharpen its competitive edge against similar companies such as Guideline.
With a series of substantial funding rounds under its belt -including an impressive $50 million from Morgan Stanley - the company is preparing the foundations for a stock market listing. An indicator of this is its hiring of fresh leadership talent who have previously worked at tech firms that have undergone successful IPOs.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Top investors
15% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 9 rounds)
Jul 2024
$242m
LATE VC
Aug 2021
$200m
SERIES D
Total funding: $577.1m
Company benefits
- A great 401(k) plan: our own! Our 401(k) includes a dollar-for-dollar employer match up to 4% of compensation
- Top-of-the-line health, dental, and vision, with employee premiums fully paid and dependent premiums 50% covered by Human Interest
- Stock options for every employee
- Generous FTO (exempt) and PTO (non-exempt) policies
- HSA or FSA offering with an annual employer contribution
- An annual membership to One Medical Group, with membership fees paid by Human Interest
- Short/Long-term disability and life insurance
- Generous parental leave policy
- Dollar-for-dollar match of employee donations to nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations, up to $1,000 per year
- Monthly work from home stipend
- Comprehensive training and professional development via Beacon U plus an annual education stipend
- Annual wellness stipend
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Roger Lee
(Co-Founder)Co-founder and CEO at Comprehensive. Studied Applied Mathematics at Harvard. Also co-founded Sub Profile and Thunder.
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