Strategic Partnership Manager

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Polar Analytics: The All-in-One Data Platform for Consumer Brands 🐻‍❄️

Polar Analytics simplifies data so brands can make smarter, faster decisions without the complexity of traditional tools. Powerful yet user-friendly, it gives DTC brands the insights they need to scale profitably.

🚀 Our mission? To help indie DTC brands compete and grow—faster and more profitably.

WHAT MAKES POLAR ANALYTICS UNIQUE? 💎

🔥 4,000+ Brands and Growing

We’ve scaled to 4,000+ active merchants (Jan 2025) and are on track for 10,000+ this year.

🤖 Disrupting a Stale Analytics Market

Polar is revolutionizing the Shopify analytics space with modern data infrastructure built for agentic orchestration—positioning us at the forefront of AI-driven commerce automation.

💰 Backed by World-Class Investors

We’ve raised $28.5M with Frst, Point9, and Chalfen Ventures, top-tier B2B SaaS investor known for spotting future unicorns early.

👥 A Team of eCommerce & Data Experts

Our team brings experience from leading eCommerce SaaS platforms & Silicon Valley data unicorns, united by a mission to build the next industry leader.

HOW WE OPERATE

We publish our operating principles internally and we mean every word. Here are the ones that matter most if you're thinking about joining:

Customer Obsession. Every decision starts with: does this make our users' lives better? If the answer isn't clear, go talk to a customer before you build anything.

Own the Number. Every metric has an owner. If it's yours, know it cold - the trend, the why, the plan. Don't wait for someone to ask. If it's off track, you should be the first to say so.

Raise the Pace. Always ask: what would it take to do this in half the time? Speed is our edge. We try 100 things while the competitor tries one.

Don't Fail Silently. If it's broken, say it. If you're stuck, raise your hand. Hiding problems is the one thing that will actually get you in trouble.

Here to Win, Not to Be Right. Quiet ego, loud standards. Don't fight to be right - fight to win together. Be ruthless on quality, never rude about it.

Optimize for Polar, Not Your Function. "Not my scope" doesn't exist here. If it makes us win, it's your scope.

We're a remote-first team that runs daily standups, ships weekly, and holds ourselves to a standard most companies talk about but don't enforce. We're transitioning from founder-led intensity to systematic company intensity - which means we need people who can maintain the pace autonomously, not just when someone's watching.

WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS

Partnerships are our highest-performing channel. One partnership manager has generated $1.1M in revenue since July 2025, with a Q1 run rate approaching $2M annually. Partner-referred deals close at 52% vs 37% for direct sales. Partnerships now account for 36% of total company revenue.

The opportunity is massive and barely tapped. The Shopify ecosystem alone has 80 Platinum partners globally (each managing 50-150 brands), 950 Premier/Plus partners (each managing ~20 clients), and a total addressable market north of $100M just from the platinum tier. We've proven the model works - now we need to scale it.

This is part founder-energy relationship building, part systems thinking at scale.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

• Partner enablement and training - getting agency teams to understand Polar's value prop, demo the product themselves, and refer qualified brands. You'll create the "Polar operating system" for partners
• Full-funnel partner pipeline from identification through activation to revenue. 43% of current partners have referred at least one deal - your job is to push that number significantly higher
• Partner economics and deal structure. You'll work with a 20% discount model (commission or client discount), master agency accounts, and bi-directional lead sharing. You need to make the math work for both sides
• AI and MCP as a partnership differentiator. Our MCP integrations are a major draw for technical agencies - you need to demo this confidently and help partners position it to their clients
• In-person relationship building at Shopify events, industry conferences, and agency visits. This role requires travel and face time - partnerships close on trust
• Tech-enabled scale - building automated workflows, partner nurture sequences, and systems that let you manage 100+ partner relationships without everything being manual

WHO YOU ARE

We don't have a rigid checklist of requirements. We're looking for a specific kind of person:

• You've spent 3-4 years in partnerships, channel sales, or business development at a SaaS company. This is not your first job - you've built partner programs before and know what breaks at scale
• You're tech-savvy and systems-oriented. You think about automation first and manual effort second. You've used or built partner tooling, CRM workflows, or enablement programs
• You know the Shopify ecosystem, ecommerce agency world, or DTC brand landscape. You understand how agencies make money and why they'd want to recommend a data platform
• You can handle the full funnel independently - from cold outreach to partner activation to ongoing relationship management. You don't need someone to set up your meetings
• You're comfortable demoing product and talking data with technical agency teams. AI, MCP, attribution models - you can explain the value without a sales engineer
• You're energized by in-person relationship building. Events, dinners, agency visits - you see these as opportunities, not obligations
• You communicate clearly and close loops fast. No messages go unanswered, no commitments slip without an update

WHAT SEPARATES A-PLAYERS

You think about partnerships as a system. You build the enablement materials, the automated nurture, and the feedback loops that let you scale from 20 partners to 200 without burning out. You understand that partner close rates are higher because the trust is pre-built - and you invest in that trust systematically. You're as comfortable building a Slack workflow as you are buying dinner for an agency founder.

WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SEE

These are the results partners help their clients achieve with Polar:

• Thiege consolidated 9 different tools into Polar and saved $300K per year vs building their own data stack
• CABA improved their ROAS by 65% using our attribution model and incrementality testing to reallocate spend
• Modular Closet grew Klaviyo flow revenue by 50% with our CDP and identity resolution layer
• Quadlock started with us below $10M - we helped them scale to 9 figures and a $350M acquisition

OUR HIRING PROCESS 📝

We believe in a structured, fair, and transparent hiring process. While the steps may vary by role, here’s what you can expect:

• Founder Screen (20 mins): A call to talk through your current/past experience and your motivations and tell you more about Polar Analytics.
• Technical Interview 1 (1 hour): Here, you'll meet our team to solve a problem live. The interview will focus on real problems we face at Polar.
• Technical Interview 2 (1 hour): This interview usually consists of a practical case study.
• Culture Interview (1 hour): A conversation with one of our Culture Champions. We assess your team fit based on our values (see below).

We value your time and effort in the application process, and we aim to provide feedback as quickly as possible.

TWO NON-NEGOTIABLE VALUES

We want to be a 10x startup - starts with everyone having 10x impact

The superceding principle. Prioritize actions with the highest expected impact. If it does not move the needle, do not do it.

Customer obsession - exists only to help users.

We exist to create value for brands and users. Never ship or act in ways that harm them. Every initiative must clearly increase user value or remove friction to realizing value.

SOME OPERATING PRINCIPLES

The only way to win is to move fast

• Try 100 things vs the competitor’s one attempt
• Action precedes information

Every person and every system improves each week.

• Growth is compounding.
• Hold a weekly retro and a weekly forward plan.

Be ruthless on standards, never rude in delivery.

• Disagree directly, commit fully once a decision is made.

We are here to win, not to be right, or to do what we wish

• Do what it takes to win. “Not my scope” is not an excuse. Do what makes us win, not what we feel like doing.
• Set goals you believe in, then hit them. If at risk, reforecast early with a plan to close gaps.

BEHAVIORS WE DO NOT TOLERATE

• Low or no impact.
• Lack of desire to win.
• Accepting passive failure.
• Actions that harm users or sacrifice long‑term user value.
• Politics and “winning the argument” over winning the market.