Director, Business Development, EMEA

Employment Type: Permanent Job Description: You bring deep expertise in regional travel loyalty programs and point exchange dynamics, and you thrive on managing complex, multi-stakeholder commercial deals from initial strategy through to execution. What You'll Be Doing You will drive new business development across Europe, the UK, and the broader region, sourcing and executing complex partnership deals with leading airlines, hotel groups, and financial institutions. You'll focus heavily on expanding our Point Exchange footprint alongside Loyalty Currency Retailing (LCR), engaging prospective partners from cold outreach through technical discovery to contract signature. Operating as an individual contributor, you'll translate product integration specs into compelling business value and manage seamless hand-offs to our project management teams. Connected AI workflows handle the initial partner data research and draft account intelligence, leaving you free to focus your energy on high-stakes negotiations and executive relationships. What You Bring You have deep expertise in travel loyalty, credit card point transfers, or reward program economics, with a sharp understanding of how banks and airlines build value together. You own the full sales lifecycle independently, stepping easily into technical integration discussions and closing multi-stakeholder deals without needing hand-holding. You bring an active network across European loyalty programs, regional airlines, or financial institutions like major card issuers and retail banks. When it comes to AI, you don't just use it, you've replaced recurring manual work with workflows you built and refined, and you can tell the difference between output you can trust and output that needs your judgment before it goes anywhere. You are persistent, strategic, and comfortable navigating complex commercial structures across different international markets. Why Plusgrade Travel is about the moments that make a journey feel personal. At Plusgrade, we build the technology that makes those moments possible, from upgrade offers and loyalty experiences to revenue tools used by 575+ airline, hospitality, cruise, rail, and financial services partners worldwide. The work is global, complex, and rewarding. You will solve meaningful problems, take ownership from idea to outcome, and work alongside people who are smart, curious, and committed to doing great work. We also give our teams access to AI tools and the encouragement to use them thoughtfully, to move faster, explore ideas, and build better ways of working. We trust our teams to do their best work. That means autonomy, flexibility, and room to grow. Come help us shape the future of travel. What You'll Love About Us 🏦 Retirement/Pension Plan · 🏥 Comprehensive Health Plans · 📅 Flexible Paid Time Off · ✈️ Travel Experience Perk · 🧘 Annual Wellness Perk · 🚆 Commuter Perk · 🌅 Tenure-Based Work From Anywhere Program · 🍼 Parental Leave Top Up · 🌍 Adventure Pass · 🎓 Learning Allowance Our Process We believe every candidate deserves a fair, transparent experience, so regardless of outcome, everyone gets feedback. Our process: Recruiter call → Hiring Manager interview → Final interview. Plusgrade is an equal-opportunity employer committed to accessible recruitment. We welcome applications from all qualified individuals regardless of gender identity or expression, race, ethnic origin, creed, place of origin, age, sex, marital status, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by law. Accommodation is available upon request. We may use AI-assisted tools to help screen and assess applicants for this role. This posting is for an existing vacancy.