Strategic Partnerships Director

Manara is a social impact startup whose mission is to unlock the human potential of the Middle East & North Africa, uplifting the region's economy and diversifying the global tech sector, with a focus on women. We are experienced founders, operators, and technologists with leading investors (including Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Stripe, Y Combinator, Seedcamp) and advisers from Andela, Lambda School, and Honeypot.

This region has a rapidly growing population and a highly educated, diverse population. But nobody has cracked the puzzle of employment: college graduates face the highest youth unemployment in the world. Women are particularly impacted: in Palestine, 52% of computer science students are women, but 83% of them are unemployed. We run an entirely remote solution to identify the top talent, familiarize them with interviewing approaches, vet them, and find them amazing jobs (whether remote or on-site). It works: at Google 71% of our referrals in our last batch were hired.

We don’t stop at job placement. Our vision is to build the top tech talent community in this region and support them at each stage in their lifecycle: how to get a promotion, become a manager, be the first woman engineer on a team, etc. The community is driven by a tech product that facilitates connection, shared learning, and motivation.

YOUR ROLE To achieve our ambitious mission, we are seeking a Strategic Partnerships Director. We also welcome more experienced (or more junior!) candidates as long as you are willing to do the immediate work needed and, in the future, grow a team that you would manage.

You’ll establish & grow our sales team, while directly holding responsibility for building relationships with our largest and most strategic partners. You’ll design strategies to expand our partnerships with companies like Google, Meta, and Zalando, and work tirelessly building relationships with new companies. Moreover, you’ll be responsible for building relationships with organizations that share Manara’s goals and values. Ultimately you’ll be responsible for ensuring Manara graduates have many options for work after they graduate from Manara.

YOUR QUALIFICATIONS Note: Diverse candidates often screen themselves out of job applications if they don’t have all the qualifications. Please apply if you’re excited about the role - we’d love to see your application!

• Relationship Focused: You have past experience working with customers. You are energized by learning about other people’s businesses and challenges. You love putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and building long-term, successful partnerships.
• Sales: You innately understand how a sales cycle works. You ponder conversion rates constantly. You can coach people who are new to sales roles.
• Metrics driven: You love dashboards. You are able to use numbers to make an argument and tell a story.
• Execution/project management: As a small startup, we depend heavily on each person to be reliable and effective. You get things done efficiently and accurately, with little need for supervision.
• Strategic thinker: You can easily identify strategic opportunities to expand Manara’s reach. You love finding ways that businesses can work together.
• Growth mentality: You love learning, are open to feedback, and can quickly learn new things. Team player/collaboration: We are a small but mighty team. We need someone who collaborates effectively with others, reaching out to them remotely (via Slack, calls, etc) as needed. You bring “leave your ego at the door” attitude. You roll up your sleeves to do the unglamorous work or support a team member when needed.
• Remote: You love remote work. You can thrive in a remote role, and you can help our partners figure out how to thrive when they hire talent remotely.
• Ambiguity: You are comfortable with the ambiguity & change that naturally occurs at an early-stage startup. In fact, you view it as an opportunity to leave your mark!

Knock our socks off:

• Management: You have deep experience quickly growing teams, including recruiting, onboarding, managing, and retaining. People love to work for you.
• Operations whiz: You’re familiar with typical sales and marketing tools (Salesforce, MailChimp, Outreach/Mixmax, etc.). You feel comfortable using the systems and also operating them. (Or you can find the right people to do this!)
• European Tech Sector: You have knowledge of and experience with the European tech scene. You know all the best kebab restaurants in Berlin, Krakow, and Dublin.
• Talent/engineering industry expertise: you have prior exposure to & expertise in the talent industry, particularly engineering.
• Marketplace: Experience in marketplace businesses, especially talent marketplaces, is a double plus.
• Passion: You’re passionate about Manara’s mission. You have experience or an interest in diversifying the global tech sector.

LOCATION We are a fully remote team, so you can be located anywhere, but we think you'll be most successful if you're located on the East Coast, Europe, or Dubai. Our strategic partners are based in the USA, Europe, and Dubai.