Senior Director of Partnerships

We're Sweed, a product-driven startup building an all-in-one cannabis retail platform. We’re looking for a Senior Director of Partnerships to build and grow our partnerships function.

The industry is evolving rapidly, and we’re here to drive that transformation—making cannabis retail more efficient, accessible, and customer-friendly.

We’ve been on the market for 7 years, continuously growing and refining our product.

Our focus is on earning customer trust, which means constantly improving our delivery processes and rolling out new features. At the same time, we navigate the complex legal landscape of the cannabis industry, ensuring our platform remains compliant and future-proof.

Our total team size is over 200 people:

The development team is distributed globally and organized into cross-functional product teams. These teams typically consist of 8–12 members, including front-end and back-end developers, QA specialists, and analysts.
Meanwhile, our CEO, account managers, and customer success team are based in the USA, working closely with us to align product development with business and user needs.

Partnerships are still a largely untapped growth channel for Sweed. We have strong relationships across the cannabis ecosystem, but we do not yet have a mature partner program or a dedicated person responsible for turning those relationships into a consistent and measurable source of business.

As our Senior Director of Partnerships, you will build Sweed’s partner ecosystem from the ground up. This is a senior, hands-on role for someone who can define the strategy and personally execute it—from mapping the market and approaching potential partners to launching programs and generating qualified opportunities.

Your primary focus will be building relationships with organizations and professionals who influence how dispensaries open, grow, and select technology. These may include cannabis consultants, licensing attorneys, accounting firms, agencies, associations, construction and hardware providers, technology companies, and other service providers.

The commercial outcome is the priority. We are not looking to collect partner logos or sign agreements that never become active. We want partnerships that consistently generate qualified leads, new dispensary doors, pipeline, and revenue.

Initially, this will be a hands-on individual contributor role without a dedicated team. As the partner channel demonstrates traction and commercial impact, you will have the opportunity to define the structure and build a team around the function.

• Developing and executing Sweed’s partnership strategy across priority markets

• Mapping the organizations and professionals that influence dispensary openings and technology decisions

• Personally sourcing, approaching, and activating new partners

• Identifying the partner categories and markets with the greatest commercial potential

• Building referral, reseller, co-selling, co-marketing, and strategic partnership models

• Creating a clear value proposition and commercial model for each priority partner category

• Managing Sweed’s most important partner relationships

• Moving relationships from informal networking to consistent lead and pipeline generation

• Training partners on Sweed’s product, pricing, qualification process, and competitive positioning

• Creating partner onboarding materials, playbooks, and regular engagement cadences

• Working with Sales to ensure partner-generated leads receive timely and effective follow-up

• Collaborating with Marketing on partner campaigns, webinars, events, state launches, and regional activations

• Partnering with RevOps to build HubSpot processes, dashboards, and reporting

• Establishing clear rules for attribution, lead ownership, referral eligibility, incentives, and dispute resolution

• Tracking active partners, qualified leads, partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline, new doors, and contribution to ARR

• Evaluating partner performance and focusing resources on relationships that generate meaningful results

• Recommending the team and resources required to scale the function

• 8+ years of experience in B2B SaaS partnerships, channel development, business development, or another revenue-generating commercial role

• Demonstrated success building a partner, referral, reseller, or ecosystem-led growth motion from an early stage

• A strong personal track record of generating qualified pipeline and revenue through partner relationships

• Experience personally sourcing and activating partners—not only managing an inherited portfolio

• Strong understanding of sales processes, lead qualification, attribution, and CRM discipline

• Experience creating partner programs, commercial models, and operating processes where little previously existed

• Ability to combine strategic thinking with hands-on execution, including research, outreach, networking, negotiation, and follow-through

• Strong relationship-building skills and credibility with senior external stakeholders

• High ownership, independence, urgency, and accountability

• Strong verbal and written English communication skills

• Willingness to travel and represent Sweed at industry events and in priority markets

• Deep knowledge of the cannabis retail ecosystem and an established network of consultants, agencies, attorneys, associations, service providers, and technology companies

• Experience in cannabis technology, restaurant technology, hospitality technology, retail technology, POS, payments, or another competitive vertical SaaS market

• Experience building partner channels for multi-location brick-and-mortar businesses

• Experience supporting both new store openings and migrations from competing platforms

• Strong working knowledge of HubSpot and partner attribution models

• Experience structuring bundled deals involving software, payments, and services

• Experience working with consultants, associations, agencies, and service providers that influence technology decisions

• A clear partnership strategy and operating model are established

• Priority markets and partner categories are identified

• A portfolio of active partners consistently generates qualified leads

• Sweed gains greater access to new dispensary openings and strategically important retail doors

• Partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline is clearly tracked in HubSpot

• Referral, attribution, and incentive processes are transparent and scalable

• Low-performing relationships are identified early, and resources remain focused on partners producing real results

• Partnerships make a measurable contribution to pipeline and ARR

• A clear plan is developed for scaling the channel and building a dedicated partnerships team

• Proactivity — you take initiative and create momentum without waiting for detailed instructions

• Commercial thinking — you focus on pipeline and revenue, not simply the number of signed partners

• Adaptability — you can build structure and deliver results in a fast-changing industry