Director, Strategic Institutional Partnerships - Special Projects Lead

As Director of Strategic Institutional Partnerships - Special Projects Lead at OKX, you own the end-to-end delivery of complex, bespoke partnerships with banks, payment providers, wealth platforms, and other financial intermediaries. You take each partnership from signed intent to live, growing volume, coordinating across Legal, Compliance, Product, Engineering, Operations, and Institutional Coverage. Your initial market focus is the EU, where OKX operates under MiCA and MiFID II, and you report to the Global Head of Strategic Partnerships.

What you'll do

• Act as the central coordinator for commercial project execution within the Strategic Partnerships team, ensuring timely delivery of high-scale projects and knowledge transfer between relationship managers and strategic partners
• Determine the ideal product solution and commercial setup to maximize value with each strategic partner, validating feasibility and alignment with product and local market teams
• Lead or co-lead commercial negotiations with OKX office representatives, from term sheet to final terms covering pricing, rebates, volume commitments, SLAs, liability, exclusivity, and service scope, aligning final terms with the Head of SIP before C-level sign-off
• Run the contract process with OKX Legal and the client's legal team, supplying commercial inputs and managing negotiations
• Serve as a main contact for the client's decision makers and project sponsors throughout the partnership lifecycle, running steering meetings, managing expectations, resolving escalations, and nurturing relationships
• Turn commercial agreements into delivery plans with Product and Engineering, covering integration model, custody and settlement flows, fiat and stablecoin rails, and reporting, owning scope, timelines, and trade-offs
• Coordinate due diligence, KYB, outsourcing assessments, and regulatory notifications between OKX Compliance and the client's compliance and risk teams to ensure regulatory requirements do not hold up go-live
• Develop in-depth expertise in OKX's trading systems, stablecoin and RWA ecosystem and apply that knowledge across partnerships
• Plan and execute go-live with clients, including end-client communication, marketing support, and incentive structures for B2B2C partners during go-to-market campaigns
• Track volume and client ramp against the business case after launch and act when performance falls behind targets
• Hand over live and stable partnerships to Institutional Relationship Managers with documented terms, technical setup, open items, and ramp targets, staying accountable until handover is accepted
• Leverage AI tools to run and coordinate several complex projects simultaneously, reporting status, risks, expected and realized business impact to SIP leadership, and maintaining up-to-date pipeline and project records
• Share implementation learnings to help the Strategic Partnerships team structure better deals, and over time, originate and close partnerships of your own
• Help build a small delivery team of project managers and solution engineers as deal flow grows

What you bring

• 10+ years in commercial roles at banks, crypto exchanges, brokers, payment or stablecoin companies, or fintech infrastructure providers, with at least 3 of those years leading client-facing delivery of complex B2B or B2B2C partnerships
• Banking knowledge from the trading, wealth management, or transaction banking side, understanding how banks make product decisions, onboard vendors, and approve new products
• Working knowledge of crypto trading systems including order routing, API and FIX connectivity, custody models, settlement, and pre-funding and credit arrangements
• Understanding of stablecoin ecosystems covering issuance, on- and off-ramps, and stablecoin use cases in payments and treasury
• Demonstrated experience personally leading commercial negotiations and taking contracts through legal review to signature
• Proven track record running projects across legal, compliance, product, and engineering teams on both client and your own sides, taking them live
• Strong proficiency with AI tools such as Claude and GPT for project management, stakeholder coordination, and reporting to manage a large portfolio with a small team

Nice to have

• Experience on the bank or payment provider side of launching a crypto or stablecoin product
• Additional European languages
• Background in investment banking, consulting, or another structured deal-execution environment
• A track record of originating, structuring, and closing your own deals

What we offer

• Competitive total compensation package
• Learning and development programs and education subsidy for growth and development
• Flexible location with initial market focus in the EU

About OKX

OKX is a leading crypto exchange and developer of OKX Wallet, providing millions of users access to crypto trading and decentralized applications. The company serves hundreds of large institutions seeking access to crypto markets and is backed by Proof of Reserves. OKX is part of OKG, a group that brings blockchain value to users globally through products including OKX, OKX Wallet, and OKLink.