Partnerships Lead

Who we areHi there 👋 We’re Ethena, compliance training that customizes itself to you. Ethena combines top-rated training content with intelligent AI that builds and adapts training to reflect your company’s unique brand, roles, policies, and risks, so it feels like your team, whether that’s hard hats or virtual meetings. From auto-assigning courses based on HRIS data to transforming your policies into interactive training in minutes, Ethena helps People, Legal, and Compliance teams launch in days (not months) and cut learner seat time by up to 60% with adaptive learning paths. Ethena supports 5M+ learners across 2,000+ organizations, with a 93% learner approval rating and 96% customer renewal rate. Over the past several years, we’ve delivered consistent, durable growth, including 120%+ net dollar retention, 95%+ gross dollar retention, and strong enterprise expansion across industries. Ethena has become a go-to compliance partner for modern, global organizations.
Beyond training, Ethena unifies core compliance tools, Hotline & Case Management, Policy Bot, and Phishing Simulator, into a single platform, with built-in audit trails and compliance controls teams can trust.
Trusted by teams at companies like Genesco, Asana, Pinterest, and Synaptics, it’s a great time to join us.
How we workWe’re a team that values diversity in all its forms and loves adding new perspectives. We ask thoughtful questions, challenge assumptions, and build with empathy, for customers and for each other. We care about craft, we love feedback, and we take ownership. We also embrace humor (yes, the puns are real), because doing serious work doesn’t have to feel so serious.
Our workforce is fully remote, and your personal working hours can be based on your own timezone. All team-wide meetings are scheduled to be inclusive of all North American time zones.
Who we're looking for
We’re looking for a Partnerships Lead to take Ethena’s partnerships motion to the next level.
You’ll be responsible for driving our partnerships strategy, strengthening existing partner relationships, and pursuing new avenues to increase revenue impact through partnerships. We want someone who can bring fresh, creative ideas and operate autonomously.
This role will report directly into the C-suite.
If you’re equal parts relationship-builder and commercial operator — and you get a little thrill from turning a good partnership into a great one — keep reading.

What you'll do

• Own our partnerships strategy: define where we play, how we win, and how we scale the partnership motion.
• Grow and deepen revenue-driving partnerships: expand existing relationships through joint planning, co-selling, partner enablement, and new initiatives.
• Identify new partnership opportunities: pursue high-potential partners aligned to our customer base, product value, and growth strategy.
• Create repeatable processes: build the playbooks, partner tiers, engagement models, and internal workflows that make partnerships scalable.
• Drive cross-functional execution: collaborate with Marketing, Sales, and Product to launch and run programs that increase partner-sourced and partner-influenced ARR.
• Measure what matters: define success metrics, track performance, and continuously optimize based on what’s working.
• Bring new ideas: we don’t want “same-old partnership playbook.” We want thoughtful experimentation, sharp prioritization, and relentless execution.

What makes a great candidate

• Experience in enterprise partnerships, business development, or strategic growth roles, ideally in B2B SaaS (or similarly complex, high-growth environments).
• Proven experience growing partnerships that drive revenue, especially building partnerships from early-stage to scale 
• Strong strategic thinking and strong execution (you can build the strategy and run the play).
• Confidence operating independently: you don’t need someone telling you what to do every day (but you do love teammates).
• Excellent relationship-building and negotiation skills, with strong commercial instincts.
• Strong analytical skills: you’re comfortable using data to prioritize, forecast impact, track pipeline, and prove ROI.
• A self-starter who thrives in a hands-off management environment — someone who takes ownership of their work with a “roll up your sleeves mentality”, is comfortable with ambiguity, proactively identifies problems and solutions, and drives their work forward with minimal oversight.
• We’re an early-stage startup so we’re not just looking for someone to run a playbook. We want you to help build it.
• Passion for what we’re