Senior Lead, External Partnerships & Social, Shop
Sales & Business Development
Remote
Senior Lead, External Partnerships & Social, Shop
- Remote - Americas
- Growth
About the role
About Shop
Shop is the consumer brand inside Shopify. Shop has hundreds of millions of users and lets customers discover new brands, pay quickly and safely via Shop pay, and track deliveries.
About the Role
You own how Shop shows up in culture: the partnerships we do with brands and media companies, and the organic social presence that carries them.
The mandate: get more people to know what Shop is, and give the people already on Shop something worth coming back for.
Brand co-marketing. Source, structure and ship at least one co-marketing partnership a month with brands selling on Shop. Pick the brands, build the offer, negotiate the terms, run the launch.
Media and non-endemic partnerships. Build always-on relationships with media companies and cultural properties that put Shop's message in front of new audiences and bring better content into the app. These take longer to land, so they need a pipeline, not a campaign.
Organic social. Own Shop's handles end to end — strategy, calendar, content, publishing, community management and reporting. Set the voice and hold it.
Measurement. Define what a good partnership looks like before it launches: reach, new buyers, engagement, GMV, cost per outcome. Kill the ones that don't work and say why.
Budget and forecasting. Own the partnership and social budget, forecast it, and defend the spend with results.
Creative. Brief creative well and edit hard. Partner work is judged in public, so the bar is craft, not volume.
Cross-org coordination. Partnerships touch merchant-facing teams, brand, lifecycle, paid, PR, legal and product. Keep them aligned on one calendar and one story, and keep leadership current with short, clear updates.
Zero defects. Everything here ships with a partner's name on it. Rights, disclosures, approvals and QA are part of the job, not an afterthought.
The team. At Shopify everyone is a manager and a doer. Run agencies and freelancers, hire selectively, and stay in the work: writing the pitch, reviewing the cut, posting the thing. Put AI agents to work where they help.
What you'll own
A monthly-or-better cadence of co-marketing partnerships with brands on Shop: sourcing, pitch, terms, launch, wrap-up.
The partner pipeline and prioritization — which brands, which moments, which sequence, and what we say no to.
Longer-range non-endemic partnerships with media companies and cultural properties, from first conversation to renewal.
Shop's organic social presence across platforms: strategy, content, calendar, community management, escalation, and platform relationships.
Content supply for partner and social work: production, agency and freelance roster, asset pipeline, rights and usage clearance.
Measurement and reporting: partnership scorecards, social benchmarks, and a clear read on what the work returned.
Budget, forecasting and vendor management for partnerships and social.
Partner-facing relationships, including coordination with merchant-facing teams so we speak to brands with one voice.
Alignment with tentpole moments (BFCM, holiday, Shop Cash events) and with the lifecycle, brand and paid calendars.
Compliance and brand safety: promotion and sweepstakes rules, disclosure requirements, IP and likeness rights, and crisis response on social with PR and Legal.
Requirements
10–15 years in partnerships, brand marketing or social at a consumer tech company or a consumer brand.
Real fluency in culture and brands: you can name the partners worth doing next quarter and explain why.
Track record sourcing and closing co-marketing partnerships, including the unglamorous parts — terms, contracting, approvals, timelines.
Experience with media or non-endemic partnerships that ran longer than a single campaign.
Hands-on ownership of a brand's organic social presence at scale. You have run the account, not just approved an agency's calendar.
Budgeting and forecasting experience, with accountability for what the spend returned.
Strong creative direction: you brief well, give useful notes, and have shipped work you would show anyone.
Clear written communication. You can get a partnership approved in a one-page memo and report results without spin.
Comfortable moving at speed with legal, brand and product review in the loop.
Bonus: experience in fashion, beauty, entertainment or sport; marketplace or two-sided businesses; creator programs.
About Shopify
Opportunity is not evenly distributed. Shopify puts independence within reach for anyone with a dream to start a business. We propel entrepreneurs and enterprises to scale the heights of their potential. Since 2006, we’ve grown to over 8,300 employees and generated over $1 trillion in sales for millions of merchants in 175 countries.
This is life-defining work that directly impacts people’s lives as much as it transforms your own. This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option.
About you
Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos. Shopifolk thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable. That means Shopify is not the right place for everyone.
- Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone
- Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth
- Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)
- Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change
- Bring critical thought and opinion
- Put AI agents and tools to work on the tasks they're built for, and focus on the work only humans can do
- Embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward
- Work digital-first for your daily work