Senior Specialist, Partnerships Operations - 12 Month Fixed Term Contract

Our Purpose
Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we're helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.
Title and Summary
Senior Specialist, Partnerships Operations - 12 Month Fixed Term Contract
Overview:
Mastercard Merchant Cloud, which includes Mastercard Payment Gateway Services (MPGS), is a cornerstone of Global Acceptance & Merchant Solutions, enabling acquirers, merchants, PSPs, and payment facilitators to deliver seamless, secure and scalable customer experiences across channels.
As part of our growth and innovation agenda, the Merchant Cloud Partnerships Operations Specialist will play a pivotal role in executing our global partnership strategy. This role is central to expanding Merchant Cloud's product proposition and revenue opportunities through strategic alliances. Whilst based in London, you will collaborate with global and regional stakeholders to deliver market-leading capabilities and drive commercial success through partners.
Role - key responsibilities:
* Framework Development: Own the evolution of partnership engagement models, documentation standards, and operational frameworks.
* Reporting: Lead the monthly Partnerships reporting process, incl. data collection, report generation, performance interpretation, and own regular improvements.
* Support Large Strategic Partnerships: Support Partner lead on the end-to-end engagement for large strategic global partners, including programme coordination, procurement processes, go-to-market planning, and commercialisation efforts.
* Strategic Partnership Management: Lead end-to-end engagement with 2-3 smaller global partners, including commercial negotiations, go-to-market planning, and executive-level reporting.
* Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with Product, Commercialization, Regional Teams, and other internal stakeholders to ensure partnership initiatives align with market needs and strategic priorities and roadmaps.
* Performance Optimization: Drive continuous improvement in partner performance, identifying new growth opportunities and ensuring delivery against KPIs.
* Sales Enablement: Partner with Regional Product teams to accelerate time-to-market and support pipeline development through strategic partnerships.
* Stakeholder Engagement: Build and maintain strong relationships across internal and external stakeholders to ensure alignment and execution of partnership roadmaps.
* Market Understanding: Invest in continuous learning about the ecosystem, the trends and new technologies which are poised to influence the ecosystem in the mid-to-long term.
All About You:
* Post-graduation experience, within fintech, payments, or SaaS.
* Understanding of payment gateways, acquiring, embedded finance, or digital commerce ecosystems a plus.
* Experience in product management or solution consulting in payments desirable.
* Experience in working effectively with global, cross-functional teams required.
* Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence at all levels of the organization.
* Experience with CRM and reporting tools (e.g., Salesforce, Tableau) is a plus.
* Self-starter and delivery focused, actively collaborates and shares best practice.
Please note this is a 12 month fixed term contract.
Corporate Security Responsibility
All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard's security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard's guidelines.