Director, Deal Desk

Vanta · Enterprise · U.S. · Remote · Finance

This role is for a Director of Deal Desk and Strategy at Vanta, a company focused on security and trust management. The position involves leading a global Deal Desk team, owning deal strategy, improving frameworks, and partnering with Sales, Accounting, Legal, and Finance to ensure accurate and efficient deal closures. The role requires building operational infrastructure for the Deal Desk, including tooling, workflows, and analytics. While the company uses AI, this role is not directly building or researching AI models; it's a product/operations role within an AI-adjacent company.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead and grow a global Deal Desk team across NAMER, EMEA, and APAC, developing team members, establishing coverage models, and hiring for the open EMEA and APAC roles
  2. Own deal strategy, improve the frameworks, discount guardrails, approval matrices, and escalation paths that allow Sales to move fast with the right controls in place
  3. Serve as the trusted strategic partner to Sales leadership on complex, large, and non-standard deals, bringing a commercial point of view, not just a process check
  4. Partner closely with Accounting, Legal, and Finance to ensure deal structures are compliant with revenue recognition and legal frameworks
  5. Build the operational infrastructure for Deal Desk, including tooling, workflows, approval automation, and analytics that provide visibility into deal health and velocity

Skills

Required

  • 8-10 years of Deal Desk, Deal Strategy or related commercial experience in a high-growth B2B SaaS environment
  • at least 3-4 years in a people leadership role
  • High sales empathy
  • Executive-level stakeholder management skills across Sales, Legal, and Accounting

Nice to have

  • Open to using AI to amplify their skills and strengthen their work - demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact.

What the JD emphasized

  • Proven ability to build and scale a deal desk function; you've done this before and know what good looks like
  • Strategic thinker who builds scalable programs, not just manages transactions; you're always thinking about the next stage of the function