Senior Business Development Manager – Institutional Partnerships (MJ000013)

About the Role

LianLian Europe S.A. is a Luxembourg-licensed Electronic Money Institution operating under the supervision of the CSSF. As we scale our institutional business globally, we are seeking a senior BD professional to own and grow a portfolio of high-value institutional partnerships — spanning licensed financial institutions, multinational corporate treasury functions, and regulated FinTech operators worldwide.

This is a founding institutional sales role. You will operate as an individual contributor in the near term, with a mandate to build pipeline, close deals, and lay the groundwork for a team around you. You will report directly to the CEO and work at the intersection of commercial strategy, product, and compliance.

Key Responsibilities

1. Institutional Partnership Sourcing & Deal Execution

· Own the full commercial lifecycle for institutional accounts: prospecting, qualification, business case structuring, commercial negotiation, contract execution, and financial launch.

· Target two distinct institutional segments:

o Licensed financial institutions: banks, EMIs, PSPs, and regulated FinTechs seeking cross-border payment infrastructure (API integration, white-label payment rails, FX solutions).

o Multinational corporates: treasury and finance functions of large cross-border groups requiring payment collection and FX capabilities at scale.

· Structure and negotiate complex commercial arrangements.

· Maintain a disciplined pipeline with clear revenue forecasting, milestone tracking, and executive-level reporting to the CEO.

2. Global Market Coverage & Network Activation

· Build and execute an institutional sales strategy with no geographic restriction — targeting opportunities across Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and beyond, with particular focus on corridors relevant to LianLian's cross-border payment flows.

· Leverage an existing senior-level network within the financial services and FinTech ecosystem to accelerate pipeline development and reduce time-to-close on priority opportunities.

· Serve as LLEU's institutional market intelligence function: tracking competitor positioning, regulatory developments, and emerging partnership models to identify and prioritise high-potential targets.

3. Cross-Functional Execution

· Partner with the Product team to translate institutional partner requirements into technically and commercially feasible integration scopes, ensuring LLEU's offering remains competitive for regulated counterparties.

· Work closely with Compliance and Legal to ensure all institutional agreements meet CSSF regulatory requirements and LLEU's AML/CFT obligations — particularly for partnerships involving licensed financial institutions.

· Drive clean handover of signed partnerships to the Operations and Relationship Management teams, with defined SLAs and a structured onboarding process that protects client satisfaction and enables upsell.

4. Team Building (Medium Term)

· As pipeline grows, define the institutional sales team structure, contribute to hiring decisions, and establish playbooks, tooling, and processes that allow the function to scale beyond an individual contributor model.

Qualifications

Core Requirements

· Bachelor's degree or above; 7+ years of experience in institutional sales, business development, or financial partnerships within FinTech, Payments, Banking, or a regulated financial services environment.

· Demonstrated track record of independently closing complex B2B deals with licensed financial institutions (banks, EMIs, PSPs) and/or large multinational corporate treasury functions — with clear, attributable revenue outcomes.

· Deep working knowledge of EMI/PSP business models, cross-border payment infrastructure, API-based payment integrations, and FX products for institutional use cases.

· Practical understanding of the compliance and regulatory requirements that govern institutional partnerships in the EU payments space, including EMD2/PSD2 frameworks and CSSF expectations.

· An active, senior-level professional network across financial services and FinTech that can be put to work from day one.

Professional Competencies

· Commercially sharp: able to structure nuanced deal economics (revenue share, tiered pricing, white-label arrangements) and defend them through sophisticated negotiation with institutional counterparties.

· Credible at C-level: comfortable engaging CFOs, Heads of Treasury, and Chief Payment Officers at large financial institutions as a peer.

· Operationally rigorous: able to manage multiple long-cycle deals simultaneously with discipline, and translate complex partner requirements into actionable internal briefs.

· Builder mentality: motivated by creating something from scratch, comfortable with ambiguity, and capable of operating without a large support infrastructure in the near term.

What We Offer

· Direct access to and support from the CEO on strategic deals.

· The mandate and autonomy to shape LLEU's institutional business from the ground up.

· A regulated, well-capitalised platform with an established cross-border payment product and a growing European footprint.

· Competitive base salary, performance-linked incentive, and the opportunity to grow into a leadership role as the institutional team scales.