Director, Strategic Institutional Partnerships - Special Projects Lead

As Director of Strategic Institutional Partnerships at OKX, you lead the end-to-end delivery of bespoke partnerships with banks, payment providers, wealth platforms, and other financial intermediaries. You own each partnership from signed intent through to live volume, serving as the single point of accountability 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

• Coordinate commercial project execution with strategic partners, ensuring timely delivery of high-scale projects and knowledge transfer across the Strategic Partnerships team.
• Structure solutions by determining the ideal product and commercial setup to maximize value, validating feasibility with product and market teams.
• Lead or co-lead commercial negotiations on pricing, rebates, volume commitments, SLAs, liability, exclusivity, and service scope, aligning final terms with the Head of SIP before C-level sign-off.
• Manage the contract process with OKX Legal and the client's legal team, supplying commercial inputs and guiding negotiations to completion.
• Own the client relationship throughout the entire lifecycle, serving as a main contact for decision makers and project sponsors, running steering meetings, managing expectations, and resolving escalations.
• Turn commercial agreements into delivery plans with Product and Engineering, covering integration models, custody and settlement flows, fiat and stablecoin rails, and reporting. Own scope, timelines, and trade-offs.
• Coordinate regulatory and compliance alignment between OKX Compliance and the client's teams, managing due diligence, KYB, outsourcing assessments, and regulatory notifications.
• Leverage in-depth product expertise in OKX's trading systems, stablecoin and RWA ecosystem to guide solution design.
• Plan and execute go-live with the client, including GTM campaigns and incentive structures for B2B2C partners. Track volume and ramp against the business case post-launch.
• Hand over live partnerships to Institutional Relationship Managers with documented terms, technical setup, open items, and ramp targets. Stay accountable until handover is accepted.
• Use AI tools to run and coordinate multiple complex projects in parallel. Report status, risks, and business impact to SIP leadership while maintaining pipeline and project records.
• Share implementation learnings to help originate and structure better deals. 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 or brokers, payment or stablecoin companies, or fintech infrastructure providers, with at least 3 years leading client-facing delivery of complex B2B or B2B2C partnerships.
• Banking knowledge from trading, wealth management, or transaction banking. You understand 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, including issuance, on- and off-ramps, and use cases in payments and treasury.
• Proven track record leading commercial negotiations and taking contracts through legal review to signature.
• Experience running cross-functional projects across legal, compliance, product, and engineering teams on both the client and your own side, delivering them live.
• Strong use of AI tools such as Claude and GPT for project management, stakeholder coordination, and reporting to run 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

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

About OKX

OKX is a leading crypto exchange and developer of OKX Wallet, giving millions access to crypto trading and decentralized applications. OKX is trusted by hundreds of large institutions seeking access to crypto markets and is backed by Proof of Reserves. Part of OKG, a group bringing blockchain value globally through products including OKX, OKX Wallet, and OKLink.