Director, Global SME Partner Management & Go-to-Market

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Director, Global SME Partner Management & Go-to-Market

Role Overview

The Director, Global SME Partner Management & Go-to-Market supports the Vice President in driving adoption, utilisation and commercial impact across Mastercard's SME partnership ecosystem. The role translates global partner management and go-to-market strategy into practical operating models, issuer activation frameworks, enablement materials and performance routines that regional teams can deploy consistently.

Working with regional Product, SME Business Development, Account Management, Services and partner teams, the Director helps scale strategic partner solutions across issuer portfolios and supports measurable growth in SME customer activation, engagement and solution utilisation. The role does not own regional execution directly. It acts as a global execution partner and centre-of-excellence contributor, ensuring regional teams have the tools, governance, data and best-practice support needed to launch, promote and grow partner solutions effectively.

Scope & Operating Model

• Operationalise the global GTM strategy and partner growth priorities set by the VP.
• Build issuer activation playbooks, launch models and enablement assets that regional teams can adapt and deploy.
• Support joint growth planning, partner performance management and governance routines.
• Develop adoption dashboards, insight packs and best-practice reporting for use across the global SME partnerships organisation.
• Work through regional teams rather than owning local execution directly.
• Escalate strategic issues, material risks and prioritisation choices to the VP with clear options and recommendations.

Role 1. Go-to-Market Planning & Ecosystem Enablement

• Support the VP in translating global go-to-market strategy into practical plans, playbooks and deployment frameworks for strategic SME partner solutions.
• Develop repeatable GTM models that support issuer launch, activation, engagement and scale across priority regions.
• Maintain global GTM assets, sales narratives, launch guidance and implementation toolkits for regional teams.
• Track progress against ecosystem growth priorities and highlight dependencies, risks and areas requiring VP-level intervention.

2. Issuer Adoption & Portfolio Activation

• Partner with regional SME Business Development and Account Management teams to embed partner solutions into issuer growth conversations and portfolio plans.
• Develop issuer activation frameworks, launch checklists and adoption playbooks that can be adapted locally while preserving global consistency.
• Support regional teams in identifying activation barriers and codifying approaches that accelerate issuer adoption.
• Capture and share best practices for scaling ecosystem adoption across issuer portfolios.

3. SME Customer Penetration & Solution Utilisation

• Develop practical frameworks to improve awareness, activation, usage and retention of partner solutions within issuers' SME customer bases.
• Work with Product, Services and regional teams to define engagement journeys, customer propositions and utilisation levers for partner solutions.
• Monitor utilisation patterns, regional feedback and performance insights to identify opportunities to improve SME customer engagement.
• Support measurable increases in activation and usage by turning insights into repeatable improvement actions.

4. Partner Performance Management & Growth

• Support executive partner governance by preparing business review materials, performance packs, growth plans and issue logs.
• Contribute to joint partner growth plans by coordinating inputs from regions, Product, Services and commercial teams.
• Track partner performance against agreed adoption, utilisation and commercial objectives.
• Identify opportunities to deepen partner value, improve deployment effectiveness and scale successful use cases across markets.

5. Regional Enablement & Best-Practice Management

• Act as a hands-on enablement lead for regional Product, SME Business Development and Account Management teams.
• Create and maintain GTM playbooks, partner briefs, issuer-facing materials, internal guidance and adoption toolkits.
• Coordinate communities of practice, regional feedback loops and best-practice sharing around partner-led SME growth.
• Ensure learnings from regional execution are codified into scalable global frameworks.

6. Performance Reporting, Governance & Insights

• Build and maintain adoption reporting mechanisms, dashboards and governance routines that provide visibility across partner solutions and regions.
• Consolidate regional performance inputs and translate them into clear insights, risks, actions and recommendations for the VP.
• Support quarterly business reviews, partner governance forums and internal stakeholder updates.
• Ensure performance measures are consistently defined and used across partner management and GTM activity.

7. Stakeholder Coordination & Matrix Leadership

• Coordinate across Product, Sales, Services, SME Business Development, Account Management and regional teams to support aligned execution.
• Drive follow-through on agreed actions, dependencies and priorities across cross-functional teams.
• Represent the global partner management and GTM function in working-level forums and regional planning discussions.
• Escalate strategic trade-offs, resource constraints and material execution risks to the VP with clear options and recommendations.

Experience & Capabilities

• Strong experience in partnership management, go-to-market execution, business development, product commercialisation or ecosystem growth.
• Demonstrated ability to turn strategy into scalable operating models, enablement materials and practical execution plans.
• Experience working across product, sales, account management, services and regional organisations in a matrixed environment.
• Strong commercial judgement, performance orientation and ability to use data to identify adoption opportunities and execution barriers.
• Credibility with internal stakeholders and external partners, with the ability to influence without direct authority.
• Understanding of issuer, SME and fintech ecosystems, including the commercial drivers behind SME customer engagement and solution utilisation.
• Strong written communication, structured problem-solving and senior stakeholder briefing capabilities.

Success Measures

• Quality and adoption of GTM playbooks, launch models, issuer activation frameworks and enablement materials.
• Number and percentage of priority issuers progressing through defined partner-solution activation stages.
• Growth in issuer portfolio penetration, SME customer activation, utilisation and engagement for partner solutions.
• Partner performance against agreed adoption, utilisation and commercial growth objectives.
• Timeliness and quality of partner governance materials, dashboards, business reviews and performance insights.
• Evidence that regional learnings are captured, codified and reused across markets.
• Feedback from the VP, strategic partners, regional teams and cross-functional stakeholders on enablement quality and execution support.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.