Principal, Partnership Management – Strategic Partners Europe

As our Principal, Partnership Management for Strategic Partners Europe, you'll own Staffbase's European Partnership Strategy end to end — from design through execution and cross-functional alignment. This is a senior, deeply relational individual contributor role with no shared ownership: the strategy will evolve with the market, but accountability for it sits with you.

You won't be managing a broad portfolio or a scaled program. Instead, you'll focus scarce time and resources on a small number of high-impact strategic partners across Europe, building executive-level relationships that drive real commercial outcomes. We're looking for someone who thrives operating at that senior level — internally and externally — and brings conviction, focus, and follow-through to everything they own.

We know strong candidates come in different shapes. If you've worked as a Partner Manager or in a similar partnership role and don't check every box, we'd still love to hear from you.

What you’ll be doing

Strategy & Market Focus

• Own and continuously develop the European Partnership Strategy, aligned with leadership and key internal stakeholders.
• Lead DACH as the primary market, with France as an area of active momentum requiring immediate evaluation.
• Assess all other European markets for strategic investment potential, delivering clear recommendations to leadership by the end of 2026 and on an ongoing basis thereafter.

Partner Relationships & Commercial Execution

• Own executive-level relationships with 5–10 strategic partners across Europe.
• Maintain regular in-person presence with each strategic partner
• Lead joint business planning, co-selling initiatives, and go-to-market execution with each partner.
• Ensure every strategic partner has access to the right Staffbase resources, knowledge, and internal contacts to succeed.
• Negotiate and manage individualized partner contracts starting Q3, with annual reviews.
• Evaluate smaller or emerging partners for strategic fit and provide investment recommendations to leadership — without managing them directly.

Internal Alignment & Strategic Influence

• Act as the internal voice of European partnerships, influencing product, pricing, and go-to-market priorities based on partner feedback and market intelligence.
• Build alignment proactively so partnerships are taken seriously across the organization — not just when issues arise.
• Collaborate closely with Customer Success to identify service opportunities that can be routed to strategic partners, keeping that pipeline flowing consistently.
• Serve as the first escalation point for strategic partner issues, resolving problems before they escalate and owning the outcome regardless of root cause.

Performance & Investment Decisions

• Own partnership KPIs — customer acquisitions, partner-sourced revenue, pipeline contribution, and partner engagement — tracked by market and partner.
• Provide leadership with clear, data-backed recommendations on where to invest, where to scale back, and where to exit.

What you need to be successful

• Principal level experience in strategic partnerships, alliances, or enterprise business development, ideally in B2B SaaS
• A track record of owning executive-level relationships with partners and driving measurable commercial impact (revenue, pipeline, or acquisition)
• Experience developing and executing partnership or go-to-market strategy at a market or regional level
• Comfortable negotiating and managing individualized commercial agreements
• Strong cross-functional influence — you know how to align product, pricing, GTM, and Customer Success around a shared goal without formal authority over those teams
• Business fluency in German and English; additional European languages a plus
• Willingness and ability to travel regularly across Europe to maintain in-person partner relationships
• Comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy and ambiguity, and making judgment calls on where to focus time and resources

What you'll get

• Competitive Compensation - we offer attractive salary packages including LTIP (unit-based Long Term Incentive Plan)
• Flexibility - we offer flexible working time models and the option of hybrid work, and support this with a yearly flex work allowance of €1560
• Recharge - with 31 vacation days annually (incl. one floating holiday), plus pro rata fully paid Fridays off during August
• Support - we offer offering a company pension scheme
• Volunteers Day - you’ll get one day off per year for supporting a social project