Director, Business Development + Strategy

Polymarket•New York, NY

About The Position

Business Development at Polymarket sits at the center of how we grow. On one side is consumer brokerage, where we're building institutional-grade partnerships that bring more traders onto the platform. On the other is sports, media, and culture, where the opportunity is to put Polymarket in front of massive audiences through deals with leagues, teams, and media properties that support both our marketing and product goals. This role owns that second track, with opportunity to expand into future business priorities. You'll operate as a peer to the Director running consumer brokerage BD and report directly into the head of the function. That means you have real ownership, a clear mandate, and access to the resources you need to close. The deals you work on will touch marketing campaigns, product integrations, and distribution agreements, so you'll spend as much time navigating internal stakeholders as you will negotiating with external partners. Both skills matter equally here. This is not a role for someone who needs structure handed to them. The BD pipeline is complex, fast-moving, and will require you to build the playbook as you go. If you've closed deals with leagues and media properties before, know how to keep ten conversations moving without dropping a single thread, and are equally as skilled at building models as you are at getting deals done, we want to talk.

Requirements

6 or more years of BD or partnerships experience, with a meaningful portion of that spent closing deals in sports, media, or adjacent entertainment verticals.
Background in consulting, investment banking, or similar.
A track record of closing, not just sourcing. You have signed agreements with leagues, teams, or media properties that you can speak to directly.
Demonstrated ability to manage a complex, multi-track pipeline with multiple deals at different stages moving simultaneously and nothing falling through the cracks.
Experience building commercial models and internal business cases that convince skeptical stakeholders, including people in product or marketing who didn't ask for the deal in the first place.
High autonomy as a default. You find the path forward without waiting for permission and escalate only when it genuinely matters.
Strong written and verbal communication skills. Your deal memos are tight, your decks are usable, and your verbal pitches are clear.
Comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment where priorities shift and the playbook is still being written.

Nice To Haves

Existing relationships with business development, partnerships, or commercial teams at major sports leagues, teams, or media companies.
Experience at a consumer technology company or marketplace where partnerships had a measurable impact on user growth or product distribution.
Familiarity with prediction markets, sports betting, or financial products and the regulatory context that comes with them.

Responsibilities

Prospect, outreach, and build relationships with professional sports leagues, teams, and media properties on a daily basis to generate a healthy pipeline of partnership opportunities.
Negotiate term sheets and deal structures with external partners, from initial commercial framing through to signed agreement.
Build business cases and commercial models for every material deal, then present them clearly to marketing, product, and other internal stakeholders to get buy-in.
Own the full BD pipeline for sports and media, keeping every deal stage current, documented, and visible to leadership without being asked.
Coordinate cross-functionally with marketing, product, legal, tech, and finance to move deals through internal approval processes and into execution.
Create and maintain the trackers, deal memos, and presentation materials that keep the broader team aligned and informed.
Identify new categories of partnership that Polymarket hasn't pursued yet and bring forward concrete proposals with supporting rationale.