Business Development and Partnerships Director, Digital Assets

We’re hiring a business development leader to build and run our partner program securing clients, converting early feedback into repeatable playbooks, and partnering with Product and Engineering to take offerings from concept to production and scaled GTM. This role blends enterprise relationship management, structured execution, and strong product thinking.

What you’ll do:

• Manage and lead execution of multiple major cross-functional digital assets initiatives across Nasdaq
• This role requires a professional with product, ecosystem, and technical acumen who can interact effectively with clients to both drive product and partnerships
• Lead negotiations with potential external partners and ecosystem participants while engaging with various internal colleagues to ensure successful delivery of solutions in a complex, rapidly changing environment spanning traditional, centralized and decentralized financial vectors
• Build a pipeline of customers and partners (issuers, broker-dealers, custodians, fintech platforms, infrastructure providers, blockchain networks) and close agreements.
• Define mutual success criteria: use cases, milestones, KPIs, integration scope, security/compliance requirements, and resourcing.
• Create a repeatable design partner playbook: intake, discovery, feedback cadence, roadmap mapping, escalation paths, and launch readiness.
• Customer discovery to product requirements
• Lead structured discovery (workshops, journey mapping, workflow deep dives) and convert insights into PRDs, user stories, and prioritized feature asks.
• Run feedback loops: steering calls, usability reviews, sandbox testing, and post-iplementation retrospectives.
• Establish a mechanism to separate must-have requirements (regulatory/operational) from nice-to-have, and validate what generalizes across customers.
• Pilot execution and cross-functional leadership
• Orchestrate concept-to-production execution with Product, Engineering, Legal/Compliance, Risk, InfoSec, Operations, and GTM.
• Own the program management for early deployments: timelines, dependencies, integration readiness, and issue resolution.
• Ensure pilots generate reusable artifacts: reference architectures, implementation guides, onboarding checklists, and security/compliance narratives.
• Early GTM and scaling
• Build sales enablement: demo scripts, objection handling, ROI narratives, and customer case studies (where possible).
• Create and refine the launch plan for GA: rollout phases, partner ecosystem needs, and support model.

Required qualifications:

• Must have experience in the digital assets space
• 8–12+ years in business development, partnerships, strategy, solutions, or customer success in fintech, capital markets, crypto, payments, or enterprise SaaS.
• Demonstrated success securing and expanding strategic design partners or lighthouse customers and converting pilots into scaled programs.
• Strong product orientation: ability to write crisp requirements, prioritize tradeoffs, and partner effectively with Engineering.
• Comfort with blockchain and market infrastructure concepts (tokenization, custody models, settlement flows, identity/controls).
• Excellent cross-functional leadership and executive communication skills.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience operating in regulated environments and navigating security/compliance reviews.
• Background in implementation, solutions engineering, or product-led partnerships.
• Familiarity with institutional buyer personas and procurement cycles.

Core competencies:

• Customer discovery and experimentation discipline
• Program leadership and operational rigor
• Product sense plus commercial instinct
• Executive stakeholder management
• Ability to convert learning into repeatable playbooks

This position can be located in New York, and offers the opportunity for a hybrid work environment (at least 3 days a week in office, subject to change), providing flexibility and accessibility for qualified candidates.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future; Nasdaq will not sponsor applicants for U.S. work visa status for this opportunity (no sponsorship is available for H-1B, L-1, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, F-1, J-1, OPT, CPT or any other employment-based visa)

Come as You Are

Nasdaq is an equal opportunity employer. We positively encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of age, color, disability, national origin, ancestry, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, veteran status, gene