Senior Product Partnerships Manager - Payroll

Mercury is building a full stack of financial tools for startups, and they are seeking a Senior Product Partnerships Manager to own strategic partnerships, particularly within the payroll vendor ecosystem. The role involves managing vendor relationships, leading negotiations, and ensuring that partners meet operational standards as the company scales.

Responsibilities:

• Manage a portfolio of expansion partnerships end-to-end, with particular focus on Mercury’s payroll vendor ecosystem
• Lead vendor selection processes, including evaluating RFPs and making recommendations on best-fit partners for Mercury’s product and business needs
• Structure and lead negotiations, evaluating the economics behind proposed deals, understanding the available levers, and knowing when to push versus compromise
• Sell the impact and value of being a partner to Mercury, while negotiating the best outcomes for Mercury
• Serve as Mercury’s internal expert on the payroll vendor ecosystem — building and maintaining our collective knowledge base
• Proactively identify and respond to partner incidents, integration issues, and escalations — unblocking teams with urgency and sound judgment
• Facilitate productive cross-functional discussions across product, legal, finance, and engineering — driving alignment and unblocking teams

Requirements:

• 8+ years of relevant banking/payroll operations experience and strategic partnerships experience with a track record of leading deals end-to-end, including contract negotiation
• Experience managing or working closely with lending management system providers
• Be a strong partnership leader who enjoys owning complex, high-stakes relationships
• Be an excellent communicator and highly organized project manager, comfortable operating across many stakeholders
• Consistently exercise empathy, especially in highly regulated and constrained environments
• Have a strong product sense and interest in how financial infrastructure enables customer outcomes
• Be an effective negotiator with experience navigating complex commercial and regulatory discussions
• Be technically inclined or comfortable interfacing with engineering and compliance teams on complex systems
• Stay calm and focused while working on multiple critical initiatives in parallel
• Exercise creativity while operating within regulatory and operational constraints