VP, Partnerships

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive. 

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.

How you’ll make an impact

As the VP Partnerships - North America, you will work across Xero’s product divisions to enable new product offerings and grow existing ones through building new partnerships and managing strategic relationships. This includes partnerships with financial services companies for our Accounting, Payments and other related products; technology companies across industries for our Ecosystem & App Store; partnerships to enable products in other divisions such as Connected Workplaces, Tax, and eCommerce. Additionally, you will help develop new distribution channels for Xero with leading technology platforms, financial services partners and referral platforms. 

You will lead a team of six, across North America, and collaborate closely with global product and regional go-to-market executives. Partnering with your team, and continually investing in their development is a key part of this role. 

What you’ll do

People & Team Leadership: Lead a team of regional Partnership Directors and Managers. Provide team leadership, shaping the team vision, culture, and ways of working. Foster an environment for people to continually experiment and learn. Work with your team members to help with their growth via ongoing coaching & feedback, and career planning. As needed, recruit new Xero's as required, ensuring team members are high quality, contribute to Xero's culture, and are on-boarded effectively

Strategy development: Work closely regional & global Product leaders to provide input into product & GTM strategy, and align on needed partnerships to launch new products or grow existing ones, and build new distribution channels for Xero

Strategic Partnerships: Build executive relationships with key strategic partners to build our relationship, identify new partnership opportunities and help your team execute key deals

Partnerships Evangelism: Represent and champion the partnerships agenda within North America as part of the regional leadership teams. Provide a global mindset to the team and stakeholders, championing Partnerships as a strategic function to deliver Xero’s goals across regions. As needed, represent Xero at key internal & external events, and media opportunities 

Operational Excellence: Ensure your team delivers against strategic and financial objectives. Continually find ways to improve your team’s effectiveness through evolving key operational processes. Manage team compliance with Xero policies, processes and requirements

Success looks like

- Expertly manages team resources across current and prospective partners and projects, focusing on long-term strategic opportunities, even while handling the day-to-day issues.

- You have a strong voice into product roadmaps based on your understanding of regional trends and opportunities.

- You collaborate closely with leaders across the company to align on priorities.

- You and your team develop and execute on key partnerships that deliver impact for our customers, help our partners to grow and with favorable economics to Xero in order to deliver on key regional and company OKRs.

- You personally help develop innovative new partnerships with top companies to create new opportunities for Xero to cover more jobs for our customers.

- You work with your team to identify, qualify and build a pipeline of ecosystem partnership opportunities based on solving customer problems, go-to market & product team priorities for given geography and vertical.

- You role model a learning mindset, embed learning into everyday activities and sponsor development initiatives to build partnership capabilities.

- Your team has a robust and effective approach to managing key partners. You build inclusive, resilient and psychologically safe teams 

- You demonstrate and amplify Xero’s Values 

What you’ll bring with you

 Critical competencies

- Ownership and ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment

- Ability to think broadly at a strategic level while ensuring partnership strategies align with Xero product investments

- Building effective relationships across all levels of the business, and with critical Partners

- Strong executive influence, both internally and externally.

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills

- Strategic mindset, including business/product strategy, an ability to assess the commercial viability of deals and the products they help enable, and to help with build/buy/partner evaluation 

- Expertise with commercial & contract negotiations, particularly helping teams develop these capabilities

Experience

- 10+ years of experience with business & product partnerships.

- Proven leadership experience in technology businesses at an exec level

- Broad knowledge of technology and software development, experience in the B2B software industry.

- Experience of Accounting industry is a benefit but not required 

- A solid track record of addressing customer needs through innovative partnerships

- Significant people leadership experience, with the ability to successfully motivate individuals and teams and develop individuals capabilities. Experience leading global teams would be advantageous

Why Xero? 

Diversity of people brings diversity of thought, and we like that. Our human-first culture of respect, fairness, and inclusion is what helps Xeros thrive and work and beyond. Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, employee resource groups, wellbeing programming and allowances, medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance, fertility and family forming financial support, 401k contribution matching, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices with snacks and break areas, flexible working, career development and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.

Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single competency or experience. If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be just the right person for this role and Xero. If you have any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at time of application and throughout the interview process.