Senior Lead, Enterprise Partnerships & Strategy

About this role

Why Thunderbird?

Thunderbird is one of the world’s most trusted open-source email applications, empowering more than 20 million people globally. At MZLA, the team behind Thunderbird, we build privacy-respecting communication and productivity tools that help people manage their digital lives while staying in control of their data.

We are open source by design. Our products are developed transparently and in collaboration with a global community of contributors, and that same spirit shapes how we work: collaboratively, inclusively, and with a shared commitment to putting users first.

We are a small but growing company of 60+ people distributed across seven countries. As Thunderbird evolves beyond a single desktop application, we are expanding across desktop, mobile, paid services, and new product experiences that help people and organizations work more effectively without giving up control to big tech ecosystems.

Our revenue model combines user donations, which help keep Thunderbird’s apps freely available, with paid services that cover the costs of hosted offerings while supporting long-term sustainability and continued innovation.

A note about MZLA and Mozilla: MZLA Technologies Corporation is the nonprofit-owned company behind Thunderbird and part of the Mozilla family. MZLA is separate from Mozilla Corporation and has its own compensation programs, benefits, and employment policies.

To learn more, visit www.thunderbird.net and www.thunderbolt.io

The opportunity

MZLA is entering a new phase of growth as we bring Thunderbird, Thunderbolt, and other current and future products and services into the enterprise market. Our enterprise approach will be partner-led, with external partners leading sales, implementation, and ongoing customer relationships while MZLA provides the products, technical expertise, and subject-matter knowledge needed for success.

Our move into the enterprise market is being shaped in part by growing interest in digital sovereignty, particularly in Europe , where enterprises and public-sector organizations are placing greater emphasis on control over data and infrastructure, deployment flexibility, privacy, security, interoperability, and reduced vendor dependence.

We are looking for a Senior Lead, Enterprise Partnerships & Strategy to add dedicated partnership and commercial expertise to work already underway . You will partner closely with the CEO, senior leadership, and cross-functional teams to shape MZLA’s enterprise strategy, evaluate opportunities, develop partnership and commercial models, shape pricing and packaging, and advance a cohesive enterprise offering across our products and services.

This is a hands-on role in a lean environment. Success will require someone who can operate credibly with senior leaders and external partners while remaining closely involved in the analysis, preparation, coordination, negotiation, and follow-through needed to move opportunities forward and build a more repeatable enterprise approach.

This role requires regular working-hour overlap with colleagues in North American time zones, as well as flexibility to meet with partners and stakeholders across Europe. This role will also include periodic travel, including international, to meet with partners, prospective customers and represent MZLA at relevant industry events.

What you’ll do

• Help define and execute an enterprise strategy across MZLA’s products and services.

• Translate digital sovereignty priorities into clear enterprise and partnership requirements.

• Identify, evaluate, and advance enterprise opportunities and strategic partnerships, particularly in Europe and other sovereignty-focused markets.

• Work with stakeholders to clarify roles across MZLA, external partners, and other Mozilla entities.

• Develop pricing, packaging, licensing, reseller, revenue-sharing, support, implementation, and other commercial models.

• Lead or support partner negotiations and senior-level commercial discussions.

• Work closely with product and engineering teams to understand capabilities, deployment options, integrations, security and privacy considerations, support requirements, and roadmap dependencies.

• Translate technical capabilities into clear enterprise propositions and partner plans.

• Build practical processes and decision frameworks that support repeatable execution and help ensure external commitments remain realistic and supportable.

What you bring

• 15+ years of relevant professional experience, including substantial experience in product or strategic partnerships, enterprise strategy, commercial strategy, or technical business development.

• Experience building a new partnership, enterprise, platform, or commercial capability in a partner-led environment.

• Experience working with European enterprises, public-sector organizations, regulated institutions, technology partners, or similarly complex stakeholders.

• Strong understanding of digital sovereignty and the commercial, technical, regulatory, legal, and procurement considerations shaping technology decisions in Europe.

• Experience working through resellers, systems integrators, implementation partners, or similar partner-led enterprise models.

• Demonstrated experience developing and negotiating pricing, packaging, licensing, reseller, revenue-sharing, implementation, support, or similar commercial models, with strong judgment around enterprise buying processes, deal economics, negotiation strategy, and complex procurement.

• Experience with technically complex software products, platforms, infrastructure, AI-enabled systems, communications technology, security, or privacy technology, with the technical and product fluency to work credibly with engineering, product, partner, and enterprise stakeholders.

• Strong executive communication, relationship-management, facilitation, and negotiation skills.

• Ability to bring structure to ambiguous opportunities and move comfortably between s

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