Head of Embedded & Channel Partnerships

<p>Director to VP level, depending on experience · Reports to the CEO</p> <h2>What is Coast</h2> <p>Coast is re-imagining the trillion-dollar U.S. B2B card payments infrastructure, with a focus on the country's 500,000 commercial fleets, 40 million commercial vehicles, and many millions of commercial drivers. The incumbent technologies that cater to these customers are decades old, and businesses with fleets increasingly demand modern digital experiences and transparent financial services products. Coast's mission is to deliver this at a transformational scale, beginning with the Coast Fleet and Fuel Card built on a cutting-edge spend management platform.</p> <h2>About the Role</h2> <p>More and more of our best customers find us inside someone else's software.</p> <p>Coast is embedded natively in Samsara (NYSE: IOT). A fleet can sign up for Coast, set spend policies, and have transactions checked against live telematics data without leaving the Samsara platform. Samsara has called it <a href="https://www.samsara.com/blog/may-product-updates-2026">their deepest fuel card integration yet</a>, and it now sits at the center of the <a href="https://www.samsara.com/company/news/press-releases/samsara-fuel-command-center">Fuel Command Center</a> they launched in August. In July we shipped something similar with Fleetio, where fleet managers <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coast-and-fleetio-deepen-partnership-to-unite-fuel-and-fleet-maintenance-data-302816252.html">apply for and manage Coast cards inside Fleetio</a> and every fuel and maintenance transaction posts automatically against the right vehicle. Underneath those two we have referral partners, resellers and fleet management companies producing real volume, plus a pipeline of platform deals we haven't signed yet.</p> <p>Customers who reach us this way close faster, cost far less to acquire, and tend to run bigger fleets.</p> <p>We have the foundation of a channel that is poised to grow. Building one is the job: a second engine of growth alongside direct sales, reaching installed bases we could never call on ourselves.</p> <p>You'll own it. That means sourcing and negotiating the next round of platform-scale distribution deals, activating the partnerships we already have so that partner reps actually sell, and building a repeatable channel sales motion together with our Sales leadership. Once the motion works, you'll hire the team to run it.</p> <p>For a while, though, you'll be doing the work yourself. There's no playbook waiting and no organization to inherit. There is a full pipeline of deals and an experienced colleague running many live relationships, but in year one, you'll negotiate the terms, run the partner trainings, and dig through the CRM to figure out why a partner-sourced lead stalled. You should find that appealing.</p> <p>You'll work directly with our CEO, Daniel Simon, who has led our biggest partnerships himself and will stay close to this one, and with advisors who have built embedded distribution businesses to six figures of end customers. Expect a lot of latitude over one of the company's most important growth levers, and a number to hit.</p> <h2>What You'll Do</h2> <p><strong>Own the channel as a business</strong></p> <ul> <li>Own partner-sourced growth: pipeline, activated vehicles, revenue, CAC and payback numbers that determine whether the channel is worth running.</li> <li>Decide which categories of partner deserve our investment, across telematics and fleet management platforms, vertical and field service software, fleet management companies, resellers, associations and referral networks. Say no to the rest.</li> <li>Own the commercial model: revenue share, referral fees, minimum commitments, incentive structures, and the analysis that tells us what a partnership is worth before we sign it.</li> <li>Work out how Coast should be priced and packaged when it's sold inside someone else's product. It's a different question from how we sell it ourselves.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Source and close distribution deals</strong></p> <ul> <li>Find, originate and personally run large embedded and channel partnerships from first meeting to signature.</li> <li>Get to the executives who can authorize distribution. The BD counterpart who takes your first call usually can't.</li> <li>Negotiate terms alongside our CEO, Legal and Finance: exclusivity, term and termination, data rights, co-branding, service levels, and the marketing and sales commitments that decide whether a deal produces anything.</li> <li>Work with Product and Engineering on what the integration needs to be. Plenty of integrations exist without ever driving an application.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Activate what we sign</strong></p> <ul> <li>Build the launch plan: enablement, training, incentive design, co-marketing, in-product placement, and joint pipeline reviews. Signing is the easy part.</li> <li>Get partner sales teams fluent in Coast through on-site trainings, ride-alongs, SKO presence and field time, so their reps think of us in a live deal.</li> <li>Design the incentives that make selling Coast worth a partner rep's time, and test them before scaling them.</li> <li>Own the in-product activation funnel with Product and Marketing: how a partner's customer discovers Coast, applies, and starts spending.</li> <li>Put governance in place that holds up. Executive sponsors on both sides, a QBR cadence, shared KPIs, and an escalation path people use.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Build the channel sales motion with Sales</strong></p> <ul> <li>Work with Sales leadership on how partner-sourced demand gets routed, worked and compensated, including how Coast AEs and partner reps co-sell without colliding.</li> <li>Build the plumbing with RevOps and Marketing: attribution, deal registration, referral submission, forecasting and reporting we can run the business on.</li> <li>Write down what works. Onboarding, enablement, co-sell, co-marketing, QBRs, tiering, and a clear process for fixing or ending the partnerships that don't produce.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Build the team</strong></p> <ul> <li>Hire, develop and lead the partnerships organization as the channel scales.</li> <li>Represent the channel to the executive team and the board, with a point of view and honest numbers.</li> </ul> <h2>What Success Looks Like</h2> <p><strong>By 90 days</strong></p> <ul> <li>You've mapped the partner landscape and have a prioritized view of where the next order of magnitude of channel volume comes from, with economics behind it.</li> <li>You know our existing partnerships in depth: the people, the incentives, the integration, the deal terms, and why each one is or isn't producing.</li> <li>You have had introductions to all of our strategic partnerships. You know all the main POCs and they know you.&nbsp;</li> <li>You can run a Coast demo and pitch the partner value proposition to a partner's CRO without help.</li> <li>One existing partnership is measurably more productive than when you arrived, and you can say exactly what you changed.</li> <li>The CEO has your channel plan, with targets, sequencing, resourcing and the number you're signing up for.</li> </ul> <p><strong>By 6 months</strong></p> <ul> <li>Partner-sourced pipeline is growing, with leading indicators we track and trust: active partners, trained partner reps, registered deals, partner-sourced opportunities.</li> <li>You've signed a significant new distribution partnership, or materially expanded an existing one, on terms you negotiated.</li> <li>An activation playbook exists and has been run more than once, so a new partnership has a known path from signature to revenue.</li> <li>Partner-sourced deals get routed, worked and attributed cleanly, and Sales treats the channel as help.</li> <li>You've made the case for the shape of the team, and hiring is underway.</li> </ul> <p><strong>By 12 months</strong></p> <ul> <li>The channel is a meaningful and growing share of new customer acquisition, at lower CAC and faster payback than direct.</li> <li>Several partnerships are producing at scale, so the channel isn't riding on one relationship.</li> <li>The motion runs on infrastructure and playbooks that keep working while you're on vacation.</li> <li>You've hired a team and are leading it, with a plan for the next stage.</li> <li>When the next platform in this market decides to embed payments, we get the call.</li> </ul> <h2>About You</h2> <p>The person we have in mind probably built the embedded business inside a software company. You took a product that had been sold to one customer at a time, put it inside other companies' platforms, and reached an installed base many times larger than anything your direct team could work. Maybe you ran that business. Maybe you were the second person on the team that built it and you're ready to run one yourself. What interests us less is a career spent tending an ecosystem somebody else created.</p> <p>More specifically:</p> <ul> <li>10+ years in business development, embedded or OEM distribution, partnerships or channel sales. At least once you've owned distribution as a business, with a number, unit economics you answered for, and influence over product, pricing and packaging.</li> <li>You've sourced, negotiated and closed a large embedded or distribution partnership yourself: an integration, a revenue share, joint GTM commitments, and a long negotiation with a counterparty much bigger than you.</li> <li>You've also activated one, so you know how much work follows the announcement.</li> <li>You think in installed bases. How many of a partner's customers are reachable, through what surface, at what conversion, and what would move that number.</li> <li>You can hold your own with Product and Engineering on what belongs in the embedded experience. Co-brand versus white label, placement and the in-product application flow are commercial questions as much as design ones.</li> <li>You can build the partner economics model yourself and defend the terms on the merits: rev share, referral fees, incentives, attribution, CAC, payback.</li> <li>You've worked alongside a direct sales organization and know how to keep a channel from turning into a fight over credit.</li> <li>You're credible with senior executives at large companies, including public ones, without your CEO in the room.</li> <li>High agency. An ambiguous mandate doesn't bother you, you build structure where there isn't any, and you don't wait to be told what matters this quarter.</li> <li>You want to do the work now and build the org later.</li> <li>You write well. The one-page memo that gets a partnership approved is a document you can produce.</li> <li>You already use AI tools to multiply your own output and want to push further.</li> <li>Willingness to travel roughly 20% for partner meetings, trainings, field work and industry events.</li> <li>New York City based, and able to be in the office three to four days a week.</li> </ul> <h2>Nice to Have</h2> <ul> <li>You've founded a company, or been among the first employees at one. (Founder instincts travel well here).</li> <li>Embedded finance, payments, card issuing or fintech distribution experience.</li> <li>Background with embedding a product into large platforms that have their own sales forces (vertical SaaS, telematics, HR and payroll, ERP, field service) and navigating both their product and GTM organizations.</li> <li>Fleet, telematics, logistics, construction, field services, or another corner of the physical economy.</li> <li>Reseller, fleet management company, broker or agency channels, and how their incentives really work.</li> <li>Hiring and leading a partnerships or channel team.</li> </ul> <h2>Compensation and Benefits</h2> <p>Our salary ranges are based on paying competitively for our size and industry, and are one part of our total compensation package that also includes benefits and equity. Pay decisions are based on a number of factors, including scope and qualifications for the role, experience level, skillset, and balancing internal equity relative to other Coast employees. We expect the majority of candidates who are offered roles at Coast to fall healthily within the range based on these factors.</p> <ul> <li>Salary range: $190,000 to $250,000 annually, plus a performance based bonus opportunity in an amount depending on level determined during the interviews</li> <li>Equity Grant: A meaningful ownership stake, weighted to reflect the seniority and impact of this role, with significant potential upside given Coast's early-stage trajectory</li> <li>Benefits Overview:</li> <ul> <li>Medical, dental and vision insurance</li> <li>Flexible paid time off (vacation, personal well being, paid holidays)</li> <li>Tools to help manage your financial wellness, including webinars, access to an equity tax advisory service, and company-sponsored 401(k)</li> <li>Paid parental leave</li> <li>$400 accessories allowance (a keyboard, mouse, headphones, etc.)</li> <li>Education stipend</li> <li>Free lunch every Friday</li> </ul> </ul> <h2>About Coast</h2> <p>Coast is founded and led by Daniel Simon, who previously cofounded Bread (breadpayments.com), a leading payments and credit technology firm backed by some of the world's top VCs which was acquired for $500MM+ in 2020.</p> <p>Coast has raised $165M in total funding. Our recent $40M Series B equity round was led by ICONIQ Growth with participation from Thomvest and Synchrony. We're also backed by top fintech and mobility venture funds, including Accel, Insight Partners, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Avid Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, BoxGroup, Foundation Capital, Greycroft and Colle, and premier angel investors including Max Levchin (Affirm), Josh Abramowitz (Bread), Jason Gardner (Marqeta), William Hockey (Plaid), Ryan Petersen (Flexport), and many others.</p> <p>Check out our CEO's recent podcast interview with Primary Venture Partners and last year's product/market deep dive on Fintech Layer Cake with Coast Founder Daniel Simon!</p> <p>Coast is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are building a diverse and inclusive environment, so we encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. We're an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, disability, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.</p>