Director, Arc - Banking Strategy & GTM

What You’ll Be Part Of

Circle is committed to visibility and stability in everything we do. As we grow as an organization, we're expanding into some of the world's strongest jurisdictions. Speed and efficiency are motivators for our success and our employees live by our company values: High Integrity, Future Forward, Multistakeholder, Mindful, and Driven by Excellence. We have built a flexible work environment where new ideas are encouraged and everyone is a stakeholder.

What You’ll Be Responsible For

Circle is looking for a Business Development Director to lead ecosystem development and business partnerships for Arc, specifically focused on “Earn” use cases. This is a foundational role on a small, high-performing team building a new onchain ecosystem within a category-defining organization in finance. You’ll be responsible for driving strategy, sourcing and executing critical deals, and shaping product direction in close collaboration with senior leadership.

• Building and owning the distribution partner strategy and pipeline for Earn across neobanks, fintech apps, wallets, and CEXs.
• Defining target segments, partner tiers (launch vs. scale), product offering, and a repeatable partner motion (discovery → business case → term sheet → integration → launch → scale).
• Establishing success metrics and forecasting tied to partner launches (e.g., funded accounts, USDC balances, Earn adoption, retention impact, and revenue).
• Leading partner discovery and translating insights into GTM + product requirements. This includes determining desired outcomes for partners, preferences on liquidity management, creating ownership boundaries, and synthesizing partner feedback.
• Designing deal structures that partners can actually ship: Creating scalable commercial and operational deal frameworks tailored to fintech distribution.
• Sourcing, negotiating, and closing strategic partnerships: Owning end-to-end deal execution: identifying priority partners, securing executive sponsorship, leading diligence, negotiating terms, and close agreements.
• Navigating high-stakes conversations with founders and C-level stakeholders at fintechs, wallets, and exchanges. Driving integration and launch execution (and ensure it works post-launch).
• Operating as an owner in a zero-to-one environment: Operating with high agency: prioritizing ruthlessly, testing hypotheses quickly, and iterating based on partner signal and data.
• Representing the project externally at key ecosystem forums, conferences, and partner events.

Core Requirements

• 10+ years in business development, strategic partnerships, product partnerships, or ecosystem roles.
• Significant experience in fintech / neobank / consumer finance / wallet / exchange environments, with demonstrated credibility selling into (and partnering with) fintech product, commercial, and risk stakeholders.
• Proven track record sourcing, structuring, negotiating, and launching complex partnerships that include technical integration and ongoing performance management.
• Strong GTM design capability: can translate discovery into packaging, positioning, and a repeatable partner motion.
• Cross-functional leadership: comfortable driving execution with Product, Engineering, Legal/Compliance, Risk, Finance, and Marketing.
• Excellent communicator and negotiator—comfortable having direct, constructive conversations at the C-suite level. High-agency operator who executes independently and thrives in a fast-moving, ambiguous, zero-to-one environment.
• Familiarity with crypto rails, stablecoins, and grasps new concepts quickly. Cares deeply about their work.
• Willingness to travel up to 30%.
• Familiarity with generative AI models (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) and prompt development.

Preferred Requirements

• Experience launching or scaling a savings / yield / interest / wealth / lending product in a fintech context.
• Exposure to onchain yield options and partner considerations (e.g., lending markets, curated vaults, tokenized treasury-like products, private credit products), including how rate environments impact messaging and adoption.
• Prior startup experience, particularly in early-stage environments.
• Experience/familiarity with Slack, Apple MacOS and GSuite.