[Hiring] Director of Partnerships @Kindred

Role Description

At Kindred, every member is both host and traveler, with hosting being the vehicle for earning credits towards travel. This makes hosting our hardest and most important growth lever:

• Recruiting members to open their homes requires trust.
• The goal of this Founding Partnerships leader is to define and build a partnerships function for the business.
• Set the strategy, define success metrics, and validate the operating model for scale via direct partnership execution during the 6-month contract period.
• Take ownership of our active inbound partnership pipeline.
• Build out a systematic outbound strategy.
• Structure deals engineered to contribute meaningful supply growth to the platform.

This is a lean team, and we're looking for someone adept at shifting between both strategy and execution:

• Sourcing, pitching, negotiating, and closing deals yourself from day one.
• Defining the operating model, metrics, and organizational roadmap for the function to scale.
• Structuring this as a contract-to-hire engagement, with the goal of at least 2 signed, meaningful partnerships by the close of the 6 months.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in partnerships, business development, or growth roles, ideally at a high-growth consumer marketplace, membership, or community-driven platform.
• Direct experience building and scaling a partnerships function from the ground up at a high-growth consumer startup.
• Proven track record sourcing, negotiating, and closing partnerships that drove measurable supply or demand growth on a two-sided marketplace.
• Strong, credible external-facing negotiator, comfortable pitching and closing deals directly with executives, community leaders, or organization decision-makers.
• Highly comfortable operating with ambiguity and building from scratch.
• Sharp judgment on prioritization.
• Clear, structured communicator who can synthesize deal economics and pipeline health for an executive-level audience.
• Available to commit to a focused, full-time 6-month engagement, with flexibility to extend or convert to a full-time role based on performance and business needs.

Requirements

• Know how to structure a deal around the behavior you actually want rather than top-of-funnel vanity metrics like leads or sign-ups.
• Bring sharp judgment on prioritization.

Benefits

• Opportunity to work in a lean, high-ownership role.
• Potential for extension or conversion to a full-time role based on performance.

Bonus Points If You

• Have direct experience with home-sharing, home-swap, or similarly high-trust marketplace models (e.g., Airbnb, Turo, Vrbo, Peerspace, or similar).
• Have closed partnerships with large membership organizations, associations, unions, alumni networks, or corporate employee communities.
• Have experience partnering with product teams to translate a partnership into a bespoke product experience.