Head of Business Development - Merchant Strategy + Partner Management

Responsibilities

The E-commerce industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and has become a hotly contested space amongst leading Internet companies, and its future growth cannot be underestimated. With millions of loyal users globally, we believe TikTok is an ideal platform to deliver a brand new and better E-commerce experience to our users. We are looking for passionate and talented people to join our operations team. Together we can build an E-commerce ecosystem that is innovative, secure and intuitive for our users. About the Role We are looking for a senior business development leader to drive merchant growth for TikTok Shop in Spain. This role will lead merchant recruitment and incubation, including acquisition and incubation strategy, service provider ecosystem development, outsourced team management, and official merchant-facing account operations, with overall accountability for merchant recruitment and merchant growth. The ideal candidate combines strong experience in e-commerce, clear strategic judgment, disciplined execution, and people management. This is a hands-on leadership role based in Madrid, with accountability for merchant recruitment, activation, incubation, service provider enablement, and merchant-facing marketing, helping build a sustainable merchant growth engine for the Spain market. Key Responsibilities 1. Merchant recruitment and incubation strategy - Define the Spain merchant growth strategy across mass recruitment, targeted acquisition, onboarding, activation, and lifecycle incubation. - Identify priority merchant segments, category opportunities, and growth barriers through market insight, merchant feedback, and performance data. - Design scalable incubation programs, including seller education, growth missions, incentive mechanisms, community operations, webinar programs, and lifecycle campaigns. - Own key merchant growth metrics, including recruitment volume, onboarding conversion, active merchant rate, go-live performance, sales contribution, retention, and graduation into higher-value operating stages. - Work closely with product, operations, category, creator, logistics, and other cross-functional teams to improve merchant experience and remove growth bottlenecks. 2. Outsourced merchant incubation team management - Build and manage an outsourced merchant incubation operating model, including role definition, hiring standards, onboarding protocols, performance targets, and daily management routines. - Establish clear workflows and playbooks for lead follow-up, merchant qualification, pitch customization, onboarding support, platform setup, and activation tracking. - Monitor outsourced team performance through structured KPIs, regular reviews, quality checks, and corrective action plans. - Coach outsourced staff and team leads on merchant communication, conversion techniques, incubation standards, and operational discipline. - Maintain team morale, execution pace, and accountability in a fast-moving, target-driven environment. 3. TikTok Shop Partner management - Recruit, onboard, and manage TikTok Shop Partners, including service providers that support merchant onboarding, content production, store operations, live commerce, advertising, and growth services. - Define the TSP development strategy for Spain, including partner segmentation, capability requirements, commercial models, and performance governance. - Set business growth targets for service providers and hold partners accountable for merchant acquisition, activation, GMV growth, service quality, and retention outcomes. - Build regular review mechanisms to identify partner performance gaps, provide improvement guidance, and scale best practices across the partner ecosystem. - Collaborate with internal teams to match merchant needs with suitable partner capabilities and improve end-to-end service delivery. 4. ToB marketing management - Lead merchant-facing ToB marketing for Spain, including official social accounts, merchant communication channels, and content operations. - Develop content strategies that educate, attract, and activate merchants, covering platform value proposition, onboarding guidance, growth playbooks, policy updates, product education, and success cases. - Coordinate marketing campaigns, webinars, newsletters, community content, and other scalable communication formats to support merchant recruitment and incubation goals. - Use content performance, merchant engagement, and funnel data to improve communication effectiveness and conversion quality. - Ensure all merchant-facing content is clear, locally relevant, commercially useful, and aligned with business priorities.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications - Professional proficiency in Spanish and Chinese is preferred. Spanish is required to collaborate effectively with local merchants and market stakeholders in Spain, while Chinese supports close partnership with internal teams based in Mainland China. English proficiency is a plus for collaboration with cross-market and global teams. - Bachelor’s degree or above. - 5+ years of work experience, including 3+ years of team management experience. - Solid e-commerce background, familiarity with the Spain e-commerce market and local merchant ecosystem.with proven experience in merchant recruitment, merchant management, seller incubation, partner management, platform operations, or related business development roles. - Proven ability to manage internal teams, outsourced teams, or external partners against clear business targets. - Strong data-driven mindset, with the ability to define goals, analyze performance gaps, identify root causes, and drive measurable improvement. - Results-oriented working style, strong ownership, and ability to operate effectively in a fast-changing environment. - Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with experience working across business, operations, product, marketing, and external partner teams. Preferred Qualifications - Experience managing service provider ecosystems, agency networks, or outsourced sales or incubation teams. - Experience operating official merchant-facing social accounts, communities, webinars, newsletters, or other ToB marketing channels. - Strong knowledge of the European commerce landscape, digital seller behavior, content commerce, live commerce, or marketplace growth models. - Structured thinking, resilience, and the ability to simplify complex business problems into executable plans.

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