---
title: 'Senior Channel Partnerships Manager at Tamara'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-channel-partnerships-manager-tamara-dubai-t3rwdnjwxdwp'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-02'
---

# Senior Channel Partnerships Manager at Tamara

- **Company:** Tamara
- **Location:** Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- **Posted:** 2026-10-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-02
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/tamara/jobs/5010002101

## Job description

About Us:

Tamara is a leading fintech platform in Saudi Arabia and the GCC region with a mission to help people own their dreams built on being simple, trusted, and everywhere our customers need us. Today, more than 25 million customers and over 130,000 partner merchants depend on Tamara every day for reliable financial solutions across retail, travel, education, healthcare, and beyond. Tamara is backed by Sanabil Investments, a wholly owned company of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and SNB Capital, among others.

About the Role:

The Senior Manager, Channel Partnerships, UAE owns the commercial execution and performance of an assigned UAE partner portfolio, from identifying and negotiating new opportunities to coordinating launches, enabling partner teams, and growing active merchants and transaction volume.

Working within Tamara’s broader channel strategy and UAE commercial priorities, this role translates market opportunities into practical partner plans and delivers measurable outcomes across merchant acquisition, activation, GMV and MDR. The role combines hands-on business development, senior partner relationship management, commercial analysis, and cross-functional delivery.

Your responsibilities:

UAE partner strategy and pipeline development

- Translate UAE commercial priorities and the wider channel strategy into a focused partner acquisition and growth plan.
- Map and prioritise payment service providers, acquirers, POS networks, e-commerce platforms, software providers, aggregators, referral partners, and relevant vertical ecosystems.
- Assess opportunities against addressable merchant base, category and segment fit, distribution reach, technical readiness, activation potential, risk profile, and expected economics.
- Build and manage a qualified pipeline, with clear next steps, accountable owners, and realistic contract, launch, and revenue timelines.
- Identify opportunities to extend partner distribution across online and in-store merchant journeys.

Partner acquisition and commercial negotiation

- Originate and develop new channel relationships and build trusted connections with commercial and technical decision-makers.
- Prepare business cases covering merchant potential, expected conversion, GMV, revenue, revenue share, integration requirements, costs, and time to value.
- Recommend the appropriate approved partnership model, including integrated referral, non-integrated referral, or reseller arrangements.
- Lead negotiations within delegated authority on commercial terms, incentives, partner commitments, service levels, and joint go-to-market activity.
- Coordinate contracting with Legal and obtain required pricing, risk, compliance, and commercial approvals; escalate exceptions rather than committing outside approved authority.

Partner enablement and merchant activation

- Build joint business plans with priority partners, including target merchant segments, acquisition motions, activation milestones, and commercial commitments.
- Equip partner sales and support teams with training, product knowledge, sales playbooks, collateral, and clear escalation routes.
- Coordinate co-marketing, campaigns, referrals, and merchant outreach with Marketing and UAE Sales teams.
- Establish clear rules for lead registration, attribution, routing, ownership, and handoffs to avoid channel conflict and duplication.
- Improve conversion from partner-sourced lead to onboarded merchant, first transaction, and sustained activity.
- Identify expansion opportunities within partner portfolios, including additional merchant categories, online and in-store adoption, and eligible product propositions.

Portfolio growth and partner relationship management

- Own the performance and health of the assigned UAE partner portfolio against agreed acquisition, activation, GMV, revenue, and quality goals.
- Run regular performance reviews and quarterly business reviews with priority partners, supported by clear scorecards and action plans.
- Develop senior relationships, manage commercial escalations, and coordinate timely resolution of partner issues.
- Diagnose underperformance across the funnel and implement recovery plans with partner and internal owners.
- Track and analyze key partner performance metrics—including lead-to-conversion rates, GMV velocity, cohort retention, and yield—using data-driven insights to evaluate channel ROI, detect underperformance early, and optimize strategic focus.

Your expertise:

- Significant experience in channel partnerships, strategic partnerships, business development, platform partnerships, payments, acquiring, fintech, e-commerce, SaaS, or another ecosystem-led distribution business.
- Demonstrated success building and scaling partner channels that delivered measurable merchant or customer acquisition, activation, revenue, and GMV.
- Strong understanding of referral, reseller, aggregator, marketplace, payment-provider, acquirer, and POS partnership models.
- Proven ability to negotiate complex commercial agreements, revenue shares, pricing structures, incentives, and multi-year commitments.
- Experience managing technical integrations and cross-functional launch programs with Product, Engineering, Operations, Legal, Risk, Compliance, and Finance.
- Strong commercial and analytical capability across pipeline, conversion, unit economics, partner profitability, cohort quality, and forecasting.
- Experience designing partner tiering, enablement, scorecards, QBRs, rules of engagement, and incentive models.
- Ability to balance ambitious growth with regulatory, credit, fraud, settlement, and operational considerations.
- Strong senior stakeholder management and executive communication skills, internally and with partners.
- Experience leading multi-market or geographically distributed partnership teams.
- Familiarity GCC commerce platforms, PSPs, acquirers, POS providers, and merchant ecosystems is strongly preferred.
- Arabic capability is advantageous; excellent English communication is required.

## About Tamara

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Tamara is the leading fintech platform in Saudi Arabia and the GCC region, offering Sharia-compliant buy now, pay later (BNPL) and payment solutions through a customer-centric financial super-app.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series? – Unicorn stage, backed by top investors)
- **Headquarters**: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (King Abdullah Branch Road, King Salman District)
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Not publicly available (company was founded in 2020 by a team; individual founder names not disclosed in provided sources)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Fintech (BNPL, payments, consumer finance)
- **Target customers**: B2C (consumers) and B2B (merchants, from SMBs to global brands)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “To help people make their dreams come true by building the most customer-centric financial super-app on earth” (from Greenhouse careers page) / “Empower people in their daily lives and revolutionize how they shop, pay, and bank” (from docs.tamara.co)

## Products & Services
For each major offering:
- **Tamara Bundle**: Includes Pay in Full and Split in 2/3/4 payment products – flexible, transparent, no hidden fees or interest.
- **Split in Installments**: Allows customers to split purchase amounts into multiple installments (varies by retail category and ticket size).
- **Pay in Full**: Customers pay the total order value upfront via Tamara, with no added fees or interest.
- **Online & In-store Solutions**: Tamara’s payment methods work both for e-commerce and physical retail.
- **Merchant Services**: Boost conversion and AOV, reduce fraud/credit risk, receive upfront payment while customers pay over time, and manage transactions/returns via a dashboard.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: $2.107 billion (as of latest funding round – CB Insights lists valuation at $2.107B, making Tamara Saudi Arabia’s first fintech unicorn)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding raised = $2.107 billion (includes equity and lines of credit; latest round was a Line of Credit - II of $1.4B about 9 months ago)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Sanabil Investments (wholly owned by PIF), SNB Capital, Checkout.com, Goldman Sachs, Citi Alternative Investments, Apollo Global Management, W2 Investments, Shorooq Partners (22+ investors total). Key merchant partners: SHEIN, Jarir, noon, IKEA, Amazon.
- **Growth Signals**: Serves millions of users across Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain; expanding globally with offices in Riyadh, Dubai, Cairo, Vietnam, India, Germany, and remote; strong headcount growth visible in open roles across engineering, data, risk, product, and care.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover & unicorn status** in Saudi Arabia’s fintech space.
- **100% Sharia-compliant** certification by Shariyah Review Bureau – a key differentiator in the region.
- **Strong backing** from PIF-linked investors and global financial institutions.
- **Deep merchant integrations** with top regional and global brands (SHEIN, IKEA, Amazon, etc.).
- **Customer-centric super-app vision** combining payments, shopping, and banking in one platform.

## Strategic Focus
- Build the most comprehensive financial super-app in the GCC, expanding product offerings beyond BNPL (e.g., banking, credit).
- Scale across the region (already in Saudi, UAE, Bahrain) and enter new markets.
- Invest in data, AI, and engineering talent to enhance risk management, personalization, and customer experience.
- Maintain Sharia compliance while innovating payment flexibility.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: “Customer Obsessed”, “Ownership”, “Resilience”, “Curiosity”, “One Team, One Mission” – strong emphasis on trust, simplicity, and being “everywhere people need us.”
- **Work policy**: Hybrid/remote options available – offices in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Vietnam, India, Germany, plus fully remote roles (per Greenhouse careers page).
- **Notable perks/engineering culture**: “We hire for human qualities, not just skills”; focus on continuous learning, data-informed decision-making, and building scalable systems; global team with diverse backgrounds; roles in engineering (backend, Flutter, QA), data science, risk, product design, and more.
- **Growth opportunity**: As a fast-growing unicorn, employees can have high impact and career acceleration.

## Sources
1. [Greenhouse – Jobs at Tamara](https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/tamara)
2. [Tamara – Life at Tamara](https://tamara.co/en-kw/life-at-tamara)
3. [CB Insights – Tamara Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/tamara)
4. [Tamara Docs – Introduction to Tamara](https://docs.tamara.co/docs/introduction-to-tamara)
5. [Tamara Careers Page](https://tamara.co/en-sa/careers)

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