The Role

Akoya is seeking a Strategy & Partnerships Manager to report to the Head of Corporate Strategy and Strategic Partnerships. This highly dynamic role is at the intersection of strategy, market and competitive intelligence, pricing, cost optimization, and channel partner development. This is an individual contributor role for an experienced professional with strong influence among internal colleagues and external clients and partners. The work requires frequent cross-functional collaboration with Akoya's Executive, Product Management, Growth, Customer Success, Marketing, and Engineering teams to advance Akoya's core strategic initiatives.

The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience in financial services, fintech, or a closely adjacent finance-driven industry, paired with real strength in either strategic and analytical work (building financial models, business cases, and market analysis ) or external partner relationship management. Candidates with both are ideal, but deep, verifiable finance experience paired with strength in just one of these is enough to be a strong fit.

As a Strategy & Partnerships Manager, you will:

• Own Discovery & Evaluation of Key Initiative & Innovation Opportunities
  • Drive structured discovery for strategic initiatives including customer research, value proposition development, and use case documentation.
  • Develop and validate business cases grounded in forecasting benefit realization and initial effort and investment estimates
• Develop pricing and monetization
  • Own and evolve product pricing models. Continuously partner with customers and the Growth team to adjust to market input
  • Maintain cost optimization tracking to identify anomalies and partner with Product & Engineering on reduction opportunities
• Market Analysis & Competitive Intelligence
  • Monitor market and competitive developments and share key highlights with colleagues for awareness and recommended actions
  • Conduct deep dives on emerging players in the ecosystem who may be potential partners
  • Contribute analytical materials for strategic planning and executive materials
• Channel Partner Management
  • Own the end-to-end health of partner relationships (resellers, referrals), serving as the primary day-to-day point of contact for the partner
  • Collaborate with Marketing to ensure co-selling artifacts are available (pitch decks, tear sheets, demos) and are continuously improved and evolved based on partner feedback
  • Enable the partner's team through training and live deal support
  • Conduct monthly and quarterly partner business reviews to measure success, identify improvement areas, and surface feedback; prepare executive updates including pipeline and financials

Required Experience & Skills

• We're prioritizing candidates with real, verifiable strength in at least one of the two areas detailed below. Both are ideal, but deep finance experience paired with strength in just one of them is a strong fit.
• Strategy & Analytics: Demonstrated ability to build financial models, business cases, pricing analyses in Excel, and to conduct and synthesize market and competitive analysis into clear, structured, repeatable outputs
• Partnership Ownership: Experience owning, not just supporting, an external channel, reseller, or key-account relationship end-to-end, including recurring business reviews and performance tracking
• Must have hands-on experience working in financial services, fintech, open finance / open banking, or another closely adjacent finance-driven industry; must possess deep-domain expertise that goes well beyond a surface-level understanding or interest.
• Confident and comfortable engaging in technical discussions with Product, Engineering, and Solutions colleagues
• Demonstrated proficiency and motivation in leveraging generative AI tools (such as Claude) to enhance productivity, improve efficiency, and elevate the quality of work outcomes, with a commitment to continuous learning and sharing of best practices amongst team members

Preferred Experience & Skills

• Background in commercialized API platforms, data networks, or banking technology infrastructure
• Experience interpreting regulatory and compliance requirements in design and development of solutions
• Use of business tools such as Confluence, Jira, Figma, and BI reporting tools (such as QuickSight, Domo, Power BI, etc)
• Client-facing or internal experience with US Financial Institutions
• Exposure to TCH, FDX, EWS, or other open finance or financial services industry payment or fraud consortiums

Where We Work

Akoya is remote-first, with this role open to candidates currently located within commuting distance of Boston, MA; New York, NY; and Raleigh, NC. For this role, Boston or New York is preferred. While our teams work primarily remotely, we are building talent hubs in these locations to create opportunities for in-person collaboration, team connection, and professional development.

Compensation & Benefits

The expected annual base salary for this role is $130,000 to $150,000

The actual base salary offered considers the candidate's work location, relevant education, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience, among other factors. Base salary is one component of the total compensation package, which includes employer-subsidized medical, dental, and vision coverage, company-sponsored life insurance, 401(k) matching, flexible PTO, and paid parental leave. Some roles may be eligible for a performance-based bonus.

The actual base pay offered may take into account the candidate's work location, relevant education, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience, among other factors.

Hiring Range:

$130,000-$150,000 USD