Head of Business Development - Small Business Lending

About the role

This is not a supporting role. You will own the full partnership lifecycle — from strategy and sourcing to structuring and scaling — and will serve as a senior voice influencing how the Lending business grows over the next three years.

Opportunity

You Will Build Across Two High-priority Growth Vectors

• Small Business Lending Marketplace
• Embedded Small Business Lending (0–1 Build)

Responsibilities

Own the Partnership Lifecycle

• Lead full-cycle business development across marketplace and embedded lending — from opportunity identification and partner sourcing through negotiation, launch, and ongoing relationship management
• Develop and manage a pipeline of high-priority partnership opportunities with rigor and velocity
• Set and Influence Strategy
• Define the multi-year partnership strategy for both the Marketplace and embedded lending businesses, including prioritization frameworks, partner segmentation, and go-to-market models
• Drive Cross-Functional Execution
• Partner closely with Product to translate partnership requirements into roadmap inputs; ensure partner commitments are backed by viable product capabilities
• Collaborate with Risk and Finance to structure deals that are commercially sound and credit-policy aligned
• Work with Marketing to develop co-marketing and co-distribution playbooks that accelerate partner-driven customer acquisition
• Coordinate with Legal and Compliance on deal structuring, data-sharing frameworks, and regulatory considerations
• Operate as a Senior Leader
• Represent the Lending BD function in cross-GBSG forums, including the QB Product Partnerships annual planning process
• Build and manage a small team as the function scales; set high standards for analytical rigor, stakeholder communication, and deal quality
• Deliver executive-ready outputs: one-pagers, strategy briefs, and board-quality narratives that clearly articulate opportunity, tradeoffs, and path to value

Qualifications

Experience

• 10+ years in business development, strategic partnerships, or corporate development in high-growth technology or fintech environments
• Demonstrated track record of sourcing, structuring, and closing complex, multi-party partnership agreements — not just managing existing relationships
• Experience building 0–1 partnership programs or distribution businesses from the ground up; comfort with ambiguity and the discipline to create structure where none exists
• Background in financial services, fintech, or lending strongly preferred; experience with embedded finance, API-driven distribution, or marketplace business models is a plus
• Prior experience working within or alongside platform companies (payments, payroll, banking, SaaS) where partnerships are a core growth lever is highly valued

Leadership & Operating Skillset

• Proven ability to drive a full BD operating system: pipeline discipline, deal velocity, stakeholder management, and rigorous commercial analysis
• Strong executive presence; can represent Intuit credibly at C-suite and VP levels with external partners
• Able to manage or mentor junior team members; able to build team culture and operating norms as the function grows
• Comfortable operating with urgency, competing priorities, and frequent context-switching between strategic and tactical work

Strategic & Analytical Strength

• Strong structured problem-solving skills; able to frame ambiguous opportunities as clear choices with defined tradeoffs
• Financially literate; comfortable building or critiquing deal economics, revenue models, and unit economics for partnership structures
• Able to synthesize market signals, internal data, and partner intelligence into actionable strategic recommendations

Communication

• Executive-level written and verbal communication skills; able to build conviction with senior leaders through clear, well-structured narratives

Collaborative by default; builds trust across functions and does not treat BD as a siloed function