Director of Business Development, Cardless
$175-220k
Plus equity
5 days a week in office (Jackson Square, CA)
Co-branded credit card creation platform
Be an early applicant
Co-branded credit card creation platform
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
$175-220k
Plus equity
5 days a week in office (Jackson Square, CA)
21-100 employees
Company mission
To make credit more engaging, rewarding, and accessible.
Role
Who you are
- 6-10 years in business development, partnerships, or a sales role with meaningful exposure to financial services — ideally including time at a bank, card issuer, or payment network
- A demonstrated track record of closing complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise deals — not just sourcing conversations, but owning the process from prospecting through signature
- Existing network in the card and payments space — relationships with decision-makers at consumer brands, financial institutions, loyalty programs, or the consulting firms that advise them
- Experience navigating formal RFP processes for financial services technology or infrastructure is a strong plus
- Network and Relationship Building: You have spent years building relationships in the right places, and you know how to open a door that is not obviously open. Your network is a genuine competitive advantage, not a LinkedIn following
- Financial Services Fluency: You understand how card programs work — the economics, the players, the contract structures, the regulatory context — well enough to have a credible commercial conversation with a bank executive or a CFO
- Sales Process and Discipline: You run a clean pipeline. You know where every deal is, what the next step is, and what it will take to close it. You do not lose deals because something fell through the cracks
- Communication and Presence: You are effective in a room with senior executives. You can explain what Cardless does in two minutes and make it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. You can also write
- Competitive Intelligence: You stay current on what incumbents are doing, what new entrants are building, and how the market is evolving — and you use that knowledge to sharpen how Cardless is positioned
- Judgment and Autonomy: You can prioritize your own time across a large number of potential opportunities and make good calls about where to invest without needing to be managed at the activity level
What the job involves
- Cardless grows by landing new brand partners — and landing brand partners requires someone who can build relationships before there is a deal to discuss, navigate the processes that larger organizations use to make vendor decisions, and persuade companies that already have a card program that there is a better way to run one. This role is that person
- As Director of Business Development, you will own the top of the Cardless commercial funnel
- You will identify the right prospects, build the relationships required to get in the room, and drive the process from first conversation through signed term sheet. You will work closely with Cardless’ President, who leads the external-facing side of the business, and with the partnerships team that takes deals from signed to live
- This is a hands-on, individual contributor role with a clear mandate: build pipeline. You will be evaluated on the quality and velocity of the opportunities you generate and move forward, not on team size or process ownership
- Identify and prioritize the brands most likely to benefit from a Cardless card program — drawing on market data, competitive intelligence, and your own network to build a high-quality prospect list
- Develop relationships with senior decision-makers at target companies over the time horizon that enterprise deals require — not just the inbound conversations that happen to come in
- Represent Cardless credibly and compellingly to executives at major consumer brands, financial institutions, and loyalty programs — most of whom will already have opinions about the card space
- Work with the marketing and product teams to ensure the materials, demos, and narratives you bring to market reflect what Cardless actually does and where it is going
- Build and maintain relationships with the consulting firms and networks that run RFP and vendor selection processes for large card program decisions
- Ensure Cardless is known, understood, and credibly represented in the processes these firms run — which requires ongoing relationship maintenance, not just responding to RFPs as they arrive
- Develop a point of view on which consulting firms are most active in the card space, which relationships matter most, and where Cardless should invest relationship-building resources
- Respond to formal RFP processes with materials that are accurate, compelling, and differentiated — working with the product, finance, and partnerships teams to pull together the right inputs
- Identify companies that currently have card programs through incumbent issuers — and build the case for why Cardless represents a materially better partner
- Develop deep familiarity with the competitive landscape: what the major incumbent issuers offer, where they fall short, and what a company that has lived through a card program launch actually cares about
- Build relationships at these companies in a way that is respectful of existing contracts and focused on what comes next — not adversarial to their current partners
- Work with the product and partnerships teams to ensure the Cardless pitch is grounded in real product capabilities and backed by the performance of existing programs
- Manage a pipeline of prospects from first contact through signed agreement, with the discipline and rigor that enterprise sales requires — accurate forecasting, clear next steps, and no deals falling through the cracks
- Work with the leadership team to prioritize which opportunities to pursue and at what pace, given the constraints of the partnerships team that will need to execute what BD signs
- Build and maintain the systems — CRM, contact databases, outreach cadences — that make BD operations repeatable and scalable as the team grows
- Provide regular, honest reporting on pipeline health, deal velocity, and the competitive dynamics you observe in the market
- Cardless has found product-market fit, has live programs with major brands, and is growing fast. What it does not yet have is a dedicated business development function — the top of the commercial funnel has been driven by the founders and the existing partnerships team
- This role is the first dedicated BD hire, which means the person who joins now will set the template for how Cardless does business development
- The strongest salespeople in financial services are typically selling products with a 30-year track record and a brand that opens doors for them. Cardless is asking for something harder: to sell a better version of a product that most of its prospects already have. If that challenge sounds more interesting than intimidating, this is the right role
Our take
Cardless is a financial technology company attempting to modernise co-branded credit card programs. There are around 200 brands in the U.S. with traditional cards that haven't been modernised in over 20 years. These traditional cards, from the likes of Costco and Sam's, enable shoppers to collect reward points that they can use for things like travel.
Cardless’ co-founders are no strangers to the financial industry. Michael Spelfogel spent time at Visa, and Scott Kazmierowicz worked in banking for Goldman Sachs. Through their experiences, they spotted a gap in the market for simple, credit card loyalty programs that focus on customer experiences. For example, it helps popular consumer brands launch credit cards that can engage with their fans and reward them with bespoke benefits.
The global credit card market is valued at over $100 billion. It's certainly big enough for consumer brands to enter; however, with Cardless acting as a middleman, there's always a risk that it could get frozen out by the big banks. Nevertheless, it secured $60 million in Series C funding in 2025, which will be used to expand its products, partnerships and card programmes.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-30% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Sep 2025
$60m
SERIES C
Nov 2024
$30m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $140m
Company benefits
- 💸 Competitive salaries, equity, and a 401(k) plan
- 🏥 Top-of-the-line healthcare (medical, vision, and dental), with 100% primary coverage and 75% dependent coverage for medical
- 🌴 Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 15 days off per year
- 👶 Parental leave for birthing and non-birthing parents
- ✈️ Team trips & offsites
- For in-office employees:
- 🍱 Catered lunch at the office every day, plus plenty of snacks & drinks
- 🚎 $250/month commuter assistance for public transit or our parking garage
- For remote employees:
- 🖥️ $500 remote setup stipend to help you do your best work
Company HQ
Mission District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Scott Kazmierowicz
(Co-Founder & CEO)Former Investment Banker at Allen & Company and Bank of America. Former Software Engineer at Goldman Sachs. BS in Computer Science at Stanford University.
Michael Spelfogel
(Co-Founder & President)Former Data Scientist at Lyft and Rent the Runaway. Formerly in Commercial Card Management at Visa. BASc in Management Science and Engineering at Berkley.
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