Product Partnerships Manager, Shipping

The Product Partnerships team builds and manages the strategic global partnerships that power Shopify Shipping, our first-party shipping product. In this role you work with our most strategic partners, and with product, engineering, finance, legal, and marketing, to build new product capabilities, streamline the merchant experience, and go to market together. The aim is to help merchants scale and optimize their shipping, with the most competitive and compelling services available to them out of the box through Shopify Shipping.

We’re looking for someone who is excellent at building relationships, works at a fast pace in new and changing landscapes, and stays hyper-organized across complex projects. You get cross-functional teams working toward a unified, measurable goal. You are a creative, driven, action-oriented thinker who takes pride in both partnership skills and product expertise, and who can envision what to build and help implement it.

You are responsible for the long-term success of these partnerships and of the Shopify Shipping experience they power. You will hold the product strategy and our partners’ goals together, help set where Shopify Shipping goes next with R&D and our partners, and scale its impact across the platform and for the millions of businesses that use Shopify.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a deep understanding of the logistics ecosystem/industry and trends, to help inform the partnership strategy and product roadmap .

• Have a deep understanding of how Shopify Shipping operates and work closely with the Product team to evolve its strategy to increase product-market fit for more Shopify merchants.

• Develop, own and expand relationships with some of the most notable logistics companies in the world, many of whom we consider strategic partners; engage them in product updates & business reviews as necessary.

• Ensure the success of your partnerships by collaborating with product and marketing to define milestones and growth targets by which we will measure success.

• Negotiate net new agreements, amendments and renewals to contracts as the partnerships grow and evolve with changing business priorities on both Shopify and the partners’ side.

• Work with our Solutions Architects to develop operational efficiencies and continuous improvement for various projects.

• Use pragmatic judgment on hard calls and always push for the right merchant outcome.

• When the standard partnership model will not get merchants a better outcome, design the commercial or product path that will, and bring the partner and our R&D teams with you.

What You Bring to the Team

• 5+ years building and running product partnerships. A real spike of knowledge in shipping, postal, carriers, commercial structuring, or product partnerships is a strong advantage, along with the hunger to learn the rest of the domain quickly.

• You are effective in a product-driven organization. You get into the roadmap, form a point of view on where the product should go, and partner with R&D to make it real with external companies.

• You are a self-starter. You see the work and move. You do not wait to be assigned the next step, and you use sound judgment on the hard calls, and anticipate pivots and change before it happens.

• You have examples of a partnership, commercial structure, or product bet that did not exist until you made the case for it.

• You communicate clearly in writing and out loud, from a teammate to a senior executive, inside Shopify and with a partner. You get to the point of view quickly.

• You have negotiated in a complex, changing environment and know how to drive positive-sum outcomes while protecting what merchants and Shopify need.

• You have built first party product with strategic partners, from roadmap and integration through launch, with the contract in service of that work.

• You hold many stakeholders at once, including executives, product, engineering, finance, legal, marketing, and design, and you keep a single thread of accountability.

• You want to help change a part of commerce that has seen too little innovation, and you want Shopify Shipping to be where that change shows up for merchants.

• You make the people around you better. You share what you learn, you are direct, and the team ships more because you are in it.

• Bonus: startup or other fast-moving experience where the quality bar stayed high and the path was not already paved.