Director, Strategic Partnerships & Partner Sales

About the role Saudi Arabia is one of the world's fastest-moving digital economies, and partnerships are central to how Mastercard will grow there. We are looking for an entrepreneurial, commercially driven leader to build and scale our partner-led business in the Kingdom and support opportunities across West Arabia. In this market-facing role, you will create new routes to market and design partnership propositions that bring Mastercard capabilities to new customers. You will be responsible for taking opportunities from the first executive conversation to signed business. You will work with a broad ecosystem that includes AI and digital platforms, cloud and cybersecurity providers, telecommunications companies, system integrators, fintechs, data businesses, and marketing and media organizations. What you will do Own growth: Lead the Saudi partner-sales strategy and deliver a revenue target through partner-sourced and partner-influenced opportunities. Create opportunities: Identify where Mastercard capabilities can be embedded, co-sold, or distributed through partner platforms and services. Focus areas include AI, cybersecurity, identity, fraud and financial crime, data insights, loyalty, and digital commerce. Shape propositions: Turn strategic discussions into clear use cases, target customers, and commercial models such as embedded, co-sell, reseller, referral, or joint-solution partnerships. Engage at senior levels: Build trusted relationships with founders, C-suite executives, and senior decision-makers across enterprise, technology, and government ecosystems. Drive execution: Lead joint business plans, account mapping, negotiations, and partner enablement to move opportunities from first engagement to first transaction. Collaborate across Mastercard: Work with product, sales, legal, finance, marketing, and delivery teams across the region and globally to bring partnerships to market. Scale what works: Turn successful use cases into repeatable commercial plays that can grow across Saudi Arabia and the wider region. What you will bring Extensive experience in strategic partnerships, partner sales, business development, platform sales, or enterprise technology. A proven record of originating and closing partner-led business while owning a commercial target. Strong knowledge of the Saudi market and an established network across technology, digital, telecommunications, financial services, government, data, or media ecosystems. Experience structuring partnerships and handling complex enterprise or government sales cycles. An entrepreneurial mindset. You are comfortable with ambiguity and good at shaping an undefined opportunity into a viable proposition. Strong commercial judgment in opportunity qualification, forecasting, negotiation, and partner economics. Excellent communication and presentation skills, with fluency in Arabic and English. A university degree or equivalent professional experience. We welcome candidates with non-traditional career paths, such as founders, platform leaders, and ecosystem builders, who can show equivalent commercial impact.