German SMEs carry an unavoidable administrative load: bookkeeping, monthly VAT returns, annual accounts. Work that must happen, that nobody wants to do, and that has stayed far too expensive.

mika takes it over. Because compliance is mandatory rather than optional, what we are building is infrastructure, and the purpose is to reduce the cost of doing business in Germany.

We went from 100 to over 700 customers in eight months and remain a small team. Roles here are therefore wide: you own an area rather than a slice of one, there is more to build than there are people to build it, and your scope grows as you do. We work in English, the team is international, the market is German.

Tasks

Partner and referral leads arrive already trusting us, which is the hardest part of our sale to manufacture any other way. We have only recently started testing this properly and it is already carrying a meaningful share of new pipeline. The pieces exist and nobody holds them together.

Networker and closer, in one person. Partnerships attracts people who are wonderful in a room, know everybody, and never sign anything. It also attracts people who can close but cannot keep a relationship alive past the signature. We need both halves.

And we need somebody who knows that a partnership is more than paying someone to send us customers. The ones that last are built on something both sides actually want: a better answer for their own customers, a gap in their offering closed, a reason for them to look good. If your instinct is to open with a commission rate, this is not the role.

You build the channel across referral and integration partners and the programmes around them, and you shape where it goes beyond that. We will talk about the specifics in the process.

what you will do

Own the channel and its number end to end
Close. Take partnerships from first conversation to signed agreement, including the commercial negotiation.
Structure the deals yourself. Work out what the partner gets, at which price tier, on the subscription or on the one-off revenue or both, over what period. You should know our unit economics well enough to say no without asking.
Own what happens after signature: technical handover, partner onboarding, and the routing rule agreed with the sales lead
Own the affiliate programme and our comparison-page strategy, working with our creative lead on production
Own our presence at events and conferences, where a surprising share of partnerships actually start
Prepare joint marketing with existing partners: webinars, co-branded content, campaigns
Apply our values filter honestly. Not every partner who would send us volume is one we want, and we would rather you turned one down than explained it afterwards.

Requirements

what you bring to the table

AI-native, not AI-curious. Claude or an equivalent is your daily sparring partner rather than a tool you open occasionally. You augment your own output with it and you automate the parts of your job that should not need a human.
You have closed partnership deals yourself, negotiated the terms, and can name what they produced afterwards
Ideally a real network in the German SME and entrepreneurship world, or in fintech.
You are commercially fluent. Revenue share, referral fees, attribution windows, exclusivity, minimum commitments: you model a deal and defend the structure.
You understand a business well enough to build the case from the partner's side rather than pitching at them
You follow up relentlessly and you keep partners warm after launch, which is where most partnerships quietly die
You are organised enough to run many parallel conversations without letting any of them go cold

the level we are hiring at

If you have been the second person in a function somewhere good and this is your step up, that is the profile we want. We have a strong bias towards people who have been entrepreneurs themselves. As the team grows, the path from here leads to Head of Partnerships.

We keep the team small by giving people leverage instead of headcount. That is why the AI point above is a requirement rather than a preference, and it is what lets one person hold more live conversations at once than this job would otherwise allow.

nice to have

German fintech or banking ecosystem
Platform and marketplace partnerships
Comfortable in a technical scoping conversation, enough to know what is easy and what is not
Affiliate and influencer programmes
API integrations and partner onboarding flows
Event and conference experience

German at C1 or above is preferred. The ecosystem we are building in is German and so are most of the negotiations. For an exceptional candidate we would work with English alone, so if the rest fits, apply anyway. English at B2 or above in either case, since it is our working language.

Benefits

Base 60,000 to 80,000 EUR depending on experience, plus a variable component tied to activated partners and partner-sourced revenue rather than to pipeline volume, plus stock options. On-target earnings 75,000 to 100,000 EUR.

Three rounds: an intro conversation, a working session with a short case, and a final round with the founders. Depending on seniority there is an optional fourth conversation with one of our investors or mentors. One meeting happens in person in Berlin, and you hear back within a week at every stage, including if the answer is no.

why mika?

A channel with no incumbent owner, so its shape is your call.
Room, and the expectation that you use it. We hire people who do not need managing and then give them space to grow into more than the job they were hired for.
Deals you structure yourself, rather than terms handed to you
Founders in the detail with you, and no layer between you and a decision
A category nobody has built. German business owners do not know an alternative to their tax advisor exists, which is also why the right partner is worth so much to us.
Work that matters outside the building. Every customer a partner sends us gets back time and money that was disappearing into paperwork.

Send us your CV and one partnership you closed: how the deal was structured, what it produced, and what nearly killed it.

At mika, we value diversity and strive to create an inclusive environment where all employees can thrive. Join us in building the future of small business finance!