Founding Partnership Lead - Ecosystem / Product Partnerships

About Terminal Terminal builds telematics data infrastructure for the commercial fleet industry. Commercial auto insurers and fleet software companies, including industry leaders like Intact Insurance, Penske, and Progressive, depend on our platform to access GPS, speeding, and vehicle data from 330+ telematics providers. We recently raised our Series A led by Battery Ventures and are backed by Y Combinator, Golden Ventures, Penske Transportation Solutions, and Intact Private Capital. Our team works together in person in Toronto, combining early-stage speed with late-stage maturity while processing many terabytes of vehicle data every day. For more on working at Terminal, see our careers page at withterminal.com/careers . Note that this role is only open to Toronto/GTA-based candidates. About the role We are hiring a Founding Partnership Lead to establish Terminal’s ecosystem partnership motion from the ground up. This is a product-focused partnerships role: you will build supply-side partnerships that convert telematics feeds into broad, auditable distribution for application-ready telematics - without partners losing ownership, attribution, or control. Partner focus: Telematics service providers (TSPs) Original equipment manufacturer (OEMs) Enrichment Data providers You’ll be a builder: set the strategy, close partners end-to-end, and operationalize repeatable onboarding and activation. Entrepreneurship/0→1 experience is a strong advantage; we want someone who is results-driven and comfortable with ambiguity. What you'll do 1) Build the partner supply pipeline + close strategic partnerships (hands-on) Define partner ICPs/segmentation and build a targeted sourcing plan across TSPs, OEMs, and data providers. Run partner deals end-to-end: discovery → technical diligence → commercial negotiation → signed agreement → launch plan. Negotiate data rights, attribution/provenance, permissioning/consent, auditability, SLAs, and commercialization (where applicable). Create crisp partner-facing materials (deck, one-pager, standard deal constructs) and an internal deal-review cadence. 2) Drive product-led integrations + partner activation (distribution outcomes) Liaison between partner needs and Terminal roadmap to ensure a smooth onboarding path: technical scoping, integration approach (API/webhooks/file), auth/rate-limit alignment, mapping readiness, testing, and go-live. Work tightly with the Product & Integration Engineering team to ensure integrations are production-grade (retries, rate limits, schema drift handling, diagnostics, freshness/SLA reporting). Ensure integrations translate into real downstream consumption (insurers, fleet platforms, fuel cards, logistics/transportation platforms). 3) Build the playbook and scale the function (repeatability > heroics) Codify a repeatable partner operating model: lifecycle stages, onboarding checklist, standard timelines, templates, escalation paths, and partner enablement assets. Build lightweight instrumentation and reporting: onboarding funnel, time-to-live, activation, incident/support load, and expansion. Establish cross-functional rhythms so partner friction turns into product improvements (not recurring fire drills). Define the scaling plan (partner ops/solutions/partner engineering) and participate in hiring over time. What we're looking for 5-7 years in ecosystem partnerships, platform partnerships, API/data partnerships, or BD in a technical product environment. Demonstrated ability to close and operationalize partnerships (not just perform relationship management). Proven technical fluency: APIs/webhooks/file exports, data schemas, normalization/versioning, provenance/attribution, permissioning/consent concepts, and production reliability. Strong cross-functional leadership with Engineering / Legal / Commercial; you can translate ambiguity into execution. High ownership, bias to action, and a results-driven approa