Lightning Labs is looking for a Business Development Lead who is passionate about bringing bitcoin to the next billion people by expanding Lightning's reach across enterprise and fintech ecosystems. This role will focus on go-to-market strategy, monetization, and high-leverage selling, translating Lightning's technical advantages into concrete business outcomes for banks, payment processors, exchanges, AI startups, fintechs, and large merchants. The ideal candidate has a strong track record in enterprise sales and strategy at a fintech, payments, AI, or infrastructure company, deep familiarity with bitcoin and the Lightning Network (including stablecoin use cases), and exceptional executive communication skills.
Key Responsibilities
- Strategy & OKRs - Set and own high-level BD OKRs across target regions, verticals, and segments; work with the BD team to translate company strategy into a quarterly plan with measurable outcomes.
- Identify the most promising use cases and companies for Lightning, agentic payments, and stablecoins; prioritize accounts and partners with the highest network growth potential.
- Collaborate with product and engineering on roadmap priorities and feature timelines given feedback from external customers and developers.
- Monetization and Sales - Design pricing, packaging, and deal structures aligned to product value (e.g., volume-based, tiered, usage-based, partner revenue shares).
- Personally lead and close strategic, multi-stakeholder deals with exchanges, AI companies, PSPs, wallets, fintechs, miners, and enterprise adopters.
- Stand up a lightweight forecast and pipeline cadence (coverage, stage definitions, velocity, win/loss) in partnership with Finance - without turning the team into a quota-only sales org.
- Developer Community and Market Development - Source and prioritize net-new partners and channels; develop joint GTM with key ecosystem players (processors, liquidity providers, compliance vendors, custody, and infra).
- Architect distribution flywheels (developer adoption → merchant enablement → payment volume) and unlock high-value corridors.
- Connect customers' business goals with the right technical integrations, integration partners, and liquidity resources.
- Executive Communications - Craft crisp, executive-ready materials (narratives, pitch decks, requests for proposals (RFPs), board/partner updates) that tie Lightning's capabilities to business impact.
- Represent Lightning Labs at senior-level meetings, conferences, and media/analyst engagements; contribute thought leadership that advances the category.
Location: Global and remote. Must be willing to work on US time zones.
Qualifications & Requirements
- 7-10+ years in business development, strategic partnerships, and/or solution-oriented enterprise sales at a fintech, payments, AI, or other relevant tech company.
- Demonstrated track record of crafting GTM strategy and closing complex, multi-party commercial agreements.
- Strong technical and product fluency: able to translate bitcoin/Lightning concepts (routing, liquidity, settlement, Taproot Assets/stablecoins, agentic payments) into clear commercial outcomes.
- Fluency with frontier LLMs and AI tools and willingness to integrate them at every level.
- Comfortable leading a small team and operating as a senior individual contributor.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication; confident with C-suite, product, legal, and technical stakeholders.
- Analytical, data-driven decision-maker; comfortable building ROI/TCO models and deal economics.
- Ability to work autonomously across time zones; willing to travel for key customers and events.
Preferred
- Public writings or talks on global payments, bitcoin/Lightning, AI, or stablecoins.
- Deep network among exchanges, AI companies, PSPs, wallets, fintechs, and payment facilitators - especially in LATAM, Asia, or Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Experience launching or scaling developer-led distribution and partner channels.
- Familiarity with compliance considerations in crypto/payments and how they affect GTM.
About Lightning Labs
Lightning Labs, founded in 2016 by Elizabeth Stark and Olaoluwa Osuntokun in San Francisco, builds core infrastructure for Bitcoin and the Lightning Network. Its flagship implementation LND powers a majority of Lightning nodes, enabling instant, low-fee bitcoin payments, while Taproot Assets extends Lightning to issue stablecoins and tokens on Bitcoin. The company also provides Lightning Loop, Pool and Faraday tools for liquidity management and node operations serving developers, wallets and exchanges worldwide. Headquartered in San Francisco with a distributed team, Lightning Labs is backed by leading investors and stewards open-source development alongside protocol research. The team champions Bitcoin scalability through careful protocol design. Expect an engineering-heavy, research-informed culture that values peer review, reliability and extending Bitcoin for everyday payments globally today.