Director, Business Development and Operations

About the role

The Director, Business Development & Operations will oversee the strategy, team, partnerships, processes, and results for Tinder’s Events initiative. This includes building a new function, closing deals at various levels of complexity, and creating a scalable operating model.

Responsibilities

• Hire, structure, and develop a team of BD Managers, Operations Analysts, and market specialists from the ground up.
• Create playbooks and onboarding systems to allow new team members to ramp quickly and operate independently across markets.
• Elevate the team's ability to pitch, close, and retain partners.
• Own the end-to-end BD pipeline for the high-volume event supply track, including outbound sourcing, outreach, pitching, negotiation, onboarding, and partner retention.
• Leverage AI and automation tools to accelerate outreach, lead scoring, pipeline management, and partner communications.
• Invent new deal structures and business models to unlock supply, from local ambassador programs to new event formats.
• Build the operating model, design and document the end-to-end workflow for sourcing, vetting, negotiating, onboarded, listing, monitoring, and renewing events across both tracks.
• Establish quality control standards for what belongs on Tinder, ensuring brand alignment, event type, audience fit, and listing accuracy.
• Build market-specific playbooks that can be systematically replicated as the program expands to new cities and regions.
• Represent the Events team's commercial interests in cross-functional discussions with Marketing, Product, Legal, and Senior Leadership.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in business development, partnerships, or sales, with at least 3 years in a senior role closing complex deals and managing or developing a team.
• A proven commercial track record with hard numbers, including deals closed, revenue or pipeline generated, and partner programs built from scratch.
• Sales operations expertise, including CRM, forecasting, comp design, territory structure, pipeline reporting, and performance tracking.
• Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and hold a team accountable, setting a high bar and bringing people along.
• Commercial creativity in pitching deal structures that didn't exist before and convincing partners to say yes.
• Operational instincts in building repeatable systems and applying that thinking to team design as much as to processes.
• Entrepreneurial drive in being energized by ambiguity, comfortable making decisions without a complete playbook, and biased toward action.
• Clear, structured communication in translating ground-level commercial activity into strategic insights for leadership and presenting with precision.

Qualifications

• Experience in events, nightlife, live entertainment, hospitality, or consumer lifestyle industries.
• Background working with national brand partners on co-marketing or co-branded deal structures.
• Familiarity with event marketplace platforms from a partnership or operations perspective.
• Experience scaling a commercial program across multiple cities or regions.
• Background working with Gen Z or millennial consumer audiences or community-driven brands.