Vice President - Business Development

About the Role

Zeta is looking for a highly entrepreneurial VP of Sales & Business Development to help build the book of business across sponsor banks, BIN sponsors, agent banks, program managers, and fintechs. This is a 0-1 role that will be responsible for creating, qualifying, progressing, and closing high-quality opportunities across debit, prepaid, credit, lending, and adjacent banking technology propositions.

The ideal candidate will be a hands-on business builder with strong existing relationships in the US banking, sponsor bank, and fintech ecosystem; the ability to open senior doors; and the commercial discipline to convert market access into qualified pipeline, active pursuits, and signed revenue.

In this role, you will

• Own prospect identification, segmentation, prioritization, and outreach across named accounts based on segment attractiveness, buying intent, relationship access, fit with Zeta's capabilities, and likelihood of conversion
• Open doors and establish trusted access to decision makers, sponsors, and influencers across banks, regulated financial institutions, program managers, fintechs, processors, networks, consultants, and other ecosystem participants
• Build & nurture qualified pipeline that meets clear standards including named prospect, named buyer or sponsor, documented use case, estimated annual contract value, and next meeting or decision milestone scheduled
• Drive the full deal journey for assigned opportunities spanning discovery, qualification, solution framing, pitching, pricing inputs, business case development, stakeholder mapping, procurement support, contracting support, and deal closure
• Anchor pre-sales engagements in partnership with the sales engineering team to create & deliver demos, POCs, tabletop-exercises, solution workshops, discovery sessions, and other impactful formats that generate traction with clients
• Support contracting, client onboarding, and early account activation to ensure a clean handoff from signed opportunity to delivery, implementation, and long-term account ownership
• Participate in events and industry fora to acquire leads, drive visibility, and awareness of Zeta's offerings & solutions
• Maintain rigorous deal discipline through accurate CRM hygiene, weekly pipeline reviews, opportunity plans, stakeholder maps, next-step tracking, forecast updates and more
• Contribute market intelligence, buyer feedback, competitor insights, pricing signals, and product input to help refine Zeta's proposition, right to play, and right to win in this segment

Success in the initial 18 months will be measured by

• Success in building qualified pipeline as measured by # of qualified opportunities, estimated annual contract value, documented use cases, named buyer or sponsor access, and scheduled decision milestones
• Establishing Zeta's right to play as measured by # of senior meetings, # of pre-sales engagements, # of active opportunities, and # of RFP or opportunity participations
• Establishing Zeta's right to win in this segment as measured by meaningful contribution to at least 2 USD 7-figure ARR client wins

Experience and Qualifications

• 15+ years' experience; with at least 5+ years as a partner or sales leader with a proven track record in building a multi-million $ book of business ground up in the US financial services sector
• Significant experience selling to both banks and regulated financial institutions as well as fintechs at a banking technology company or IT services provider
• Strong rolodex and meaningful inroads with decision makers at US sponsor banks & fintechs