Strategic Partnerships Manager

Overview

About the Role

What We'Re Building With This Role

• eZhire is transforming from a rental company into a mobility platform that owns the customer relationship across every stage of driving life in the GCC.
• The partnerships you build will materially shape what eZhire becomes over the years.
• What you will actually do,
• Build and execute the partnership roadmap;
• what categories to enter, what partners to chase, what to ship in what order.
• Source, negotiate, and close partnerships across multiple verticals.
• Build the commercial logic for each partnership; revenue model, unit economics, deal terms, payback period.
• Work with product to define how partnerships show up inside the eZhire app and customer journey.
• Track partnership performance and continuously optimise commercials and execution.
• Identify new partnership categories nobody is thinking about yet; bring ideas, not just execute on a list.
• Represent eZhire externally to senior decision-makers at partner organisations.
• Travel periodically across UAE, KSA, Bahrain, and Qatar for partnership conversations.
• Who you are,
• **4–7 years**
• of partnerships, business development, or ecosystem growth experience at a startup or scale-up; ideally in fintech, mobility, e-commerce, marketplace, or consumer tech.
• **You've built partnerships from zero,**
• not just managed inherited ones.
• You can point to specific deals you sourced, structured, and shipped end-to-end.
• **You think like an operator,**
• not a relationship manager.
• You can size a market, build a business case, structure a deal, and see how it flows through to revenue.
• **You're commercially sharp.**
• You understand unit economics, margin, and how partnerships actually translate into bookings and revenue.
• **You're product-aware.**
• You understand how a partnership lives inside an app, a customer journey, a funnel, an API.
• **You write, model, present, and negotiate well.**
• You can build a clear commercial deck, model a partnership in Excel, and hold your own in a senior negotiation.
• **You move fast.**
• You ship, and you don't wait for permission.
• Decisions in your world happen in hours, not weeks.
• **You're not from a traditional corporate environment.**
• You've worked in places where small teams build, test, kill, and rebuild quickly.
• **UAE-based,**
• with the right to work in the country.
• **Arabic is a strong plus**
• but not required.
• **You understand the UAE mobility, fintech, or consumer tech landscape**
• well enough to walk into any partnership conversation with credibility.
• What this role is not,
• To be clear about who this role is and isn't for:
• This is not a corporate partnerships role. We don't do golf days, slow procurement cycles, or six-month "alignment" conversations.
• This is not a maintenance role. If you want to manage an existing portfolio of partners, this isn't the job.
• This is not a hand-off role. You own the partnership from idea to revenue.
• This is not a role for someone who needs structure handed to them. You'll define the structure.
• Why this role?
• You'll report directly to the CEO and have a direct line into how the business is run.
• Full ownership of a new function with a wide remit across multiple high-growth verticals.
• A fast, founder-led environment with the resources of a profitable, scaling business.
• The partnerships you build will materially shape what eZhire becomes over the next three years.
• Real upside through performance-tied compensation tied to deals signed and revenue delivered.

How to apply

One Last Thing