Manager - Partnerships & Alliances

Job description / Role

Role overview

Noqodi grows faster through partners than on its own. This role finds, signs, and manages the fintech partnerships that bring Noqodi new customers, products, and revenue. These include fintechs and platforms that embed Noqodi’s gateway, wallet, and acquiring services; providers whose products Noqodi adds to its platform; and channels that let customers fund and use their Noqodi wallets.

The manager owns each partnership from the first conversation through contract signing, launch, and ongoing performance, ensuring every partnership delivers commercial value.

Partnership strategy and pipeline

• Build Noqodi’s fintech partnership strategy with the director of commercials, in line with the commercial plan and product roadmap.
• Map the UAE and regional fintech landscape and identify partners that can add the most customers, products, or revenue.
• Build and manage a pipeline of partnership opportunities, prioritised by commercial value and fit.

Deal structuring and negotiation

• Lead negotiations from the first meeting to a signed agreement.
• Structure the commercial model for each partnership, including revenue share, referral fees, licence and implementation fees, and white-label and wholesale pricing.
• Build the business case for each deal with business intelligence, showing expected volumes, revenue, cost, and margin.
• Prepare term sheets, memoranda of understanding, and partnership agreements with legal, ensuring terms protect Noqodi’s revenue, data, and exclusivity rights.

Due diligence and approvals

• Assess each partner’s financial strength, technology, security, and regulatory standing with compliance, risk, and IT teams.
• Support strategic opportunities such as licensing, joint ventures, or investments, working with external advisers on due diligence.
• Take partnership proposals through internal approvals and, where needed, present them to management and the board.

Launch and integration

• Work with product and IT teams to plan and deliver each integration, from technical scoping to go-live.
• Agree on the go-to-market plan with each partner, including target customers, joint offers, marketing, and sales enablement.
• Ensure operations, settlement, reconciliation, and support are ready before launch.

Partner performance management

• Track each partnership’s volumes, revenue, active customers, and service levels against its business case.
• Hold regular business reviews with each partner and agree on actions to grow the partnership or resolve issues.
• Work with revenue assurance to ensure partner revenue shares and fees are calculated, billed, and collected correctly.
• Recommend renewing, expanding, renegotiating, or ending each partnership based on its results.

Market intelligence and ecosystem

• Track fintech trends, new players, and competitor partnerships in the UAE and the region.
• Follow Central Bank of the UAE regulations that affect partnerships, including stored value, retail payment services, and open finance.
• Represent Noqodi at fintech events and industry forums, and build relationships with fintech hubs and investors.

Requirements

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, economics, or a related field.
• An MBA or relevant postgraduate qualification is an advantage.

Experience

• At least eight years of experience in partnerships, alliances, business development, or corporate development in payments, fintech, or banking.
• A track record of signing and growing commercial partnerships with measurable revenue results.
• Experience negotiating revenue-share, licensing, and white-label agreements.
• Experience with a payment gateway, acquirer, wallet, buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider, issuing processor, or card scheme is a strong advantage.
• An existing network across the UAE fintech and payments ecosystem is a strong advantage.

Technical and payments knowledge

• Knowledge of the payments value chain, including gateways, acquiring, payment facilitators, schemes, issuing, wallets, and settlement.
• Knowledge of payment methods, including cards, tokenised wallets, BNPL, Aani, and account-to-account payments.
• Understanding of how integrations work, including APIs, SDKs, hosted pages, and settlement files.
• Understanding of partnership economics, including merchant discount rates (MDR), interchange, revenue share, and unit economics.
• Knowledge of UAE payments regulation, including the Central Bank’s stored value, retail payment services, and open finance frameworks.

Skills

• Strong negotiation skills and the ability to close deals that work for both sides.
• Commercial and analytical skills, including the ability to build and test business cases.
• Ability to build trust with founders, senior executives, and technical teams.
• Clear writing and presentation skills, with confidence presenting to management and the board.
• Ability to manage multiple partners and projects at once and follow through to launch.