Director of Commercial Partnerships

Employment type: Full time
Reporting to: Chief Commercial Officer
Visa sponsorship: UK national or visa holder preferred, but not a dealbreaker
Salary: £100,000 - £130,000
Location / working pattern: Hybrid, London - 3 days a week in office
Background checks: Due to the non-partisan nature of the work we do with global governments and partners, all employees need to pass background checks, verifying your identity, education (if relevant), work history, sanctions, criminal record, adverse financial history, and right to work. To ensure we maintain high standards of political neutrality, we also perform media and social media checks.

About Apolitical

Apolitical's mission is to make governments smarter for people and the planet and we reach over 40 million public servants through our partnerships with governments globally. We are the largest global network for governments, used by 500,000+ public servants in 170 countries to find and share best practices and gain skills on critical topics from AI to climate change to emerging technologies.

Governments use Apolitical to solve public sector transformation challenges from AI augmentation to reskilling. We offer governments five interoperable components: research and analysis, workforce productivity tools, customisable training, vibrant learning communities and high impact convenings. Everything we do is powered by our unique global network and real-time data.

Apolitical is trusted by 60+ governments and leading organisations that work with governments. Governments include schools of government, departments, ministries and government adjacent bodies in the UK, Canada, India, EU, UAE, Brazil, Ethiopia, Singapore and more. Global foundation partners include the Bezos Earth Fund, Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, who view governments as key stakeholders in achieving systemic change.

Apolitical’s corporate partners include organisations such as Google, AWS and Microsoft who work with us at scale with governments and public sector bodies worldwide.

Our flagship AI platform, Futura, helps governments identify where AI can make a difference and equips public servants with personalised learning to put it into practice. PolicyNova and PolicyNavigator support evidence-based policy research, while our Government AI Campus and Frontier Science & Tech and Resilience Platforms provide practical learning to help public servants respond to emerging challenges.

The Role

Apolitical is entering a significant phase of commercial growth. Our priority is to expand our partnerships with philanthropic foundations and corporates who fund and co-deliver government capability building at scale.

Foundations such as the Bezos Earth Fund, Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, and corporate partners such as Google, AWS and Microsoft, already work with us to reach governments worldwide. This role is dedicated to them, working alongside a separate Director who leads our public sector partnerships.

As a Director of Commercial Partnerships, you will contribute to our foundation and corporate revenue, leading complex partnership agreements from qualification through proposals, due diligence and negotiation to signature. Your immediate mandate is to convert our existing partnership pipeline into revenue, while growing our current partnerships and building a sustainable pipeline of new foundation and corporate business internationally.

This is a senior, hands-on role with no direct reports at the start, and scope to build a team as partnership revenue grows. You will work closely with Partnerships and Delivery and Product, and with our public sector partnerships lead on programmes that serve governments.

You will:

Lead complex partnership agreements – own foundation and corporate opportunities through the full cycle, including stakeholder engagement, proposals and funding applications, due diligence, negotiation and signature.
Build and qualify pipeline – generate new business with foundations and corporates internationally, and direct effort towards the opportunities with the strongest revenue potential and strategic fit.
Grow existing partnerships – secure renewals and expand our current foundation and corporate partnerships into larger, multi-year or multi-programme agreements.
Structure sustainable agreements – develop budgets, pricing and terms that balance partner requirements, revenue, delivery costs and margin, including multi-party agreements where a foundation or corporate is the contracting party.
Shape our foundation and corporate strategy – contribute to setting priority funders, corporate partners and themes with the Chief Commercial Officer, and use partner insight to shape how we present our offer and develop future propositions.
Manage commercial performance – maintain accurate pipeline data, forecast partnership revenue, monitor conversion and identify risks requiring action.

Onboarding Milestones

Within your first month, you'll:

Develop a comprehensive understanding of our products, commercial model, existing partnerships and delivery capabilities.
Assess the existing foundation and corporate pipeline and partnerships, and agree conversion and renewal priorities with the Chief Commercial Officer.
Establish working relationships with Partnerships and Delivery, Product and our public sector partnerships lead, and take ownership of priority opportunities.

Within three months, you'll:

Be progressing priority opportunities through proposals, due diligence and negotiation.
Have agreed priority funders, corporate partners and themes, and established a qualified pipeline of new business against them.
Have renewal and expansion plans in place for our key foundation and corporate partners, developed with Partnerships and Delivery.

Within six months, you'll:

Have secured revenue-generating partnerships with foundations or corporates and demonstrated measurable progress against agreed commercial objectives.
Be independently managing your pipeline and partnerships with reliable forecasting and clear visibility of commercial risks.
Be contributing partner insight that shapes our commercial priorities, pricing and propositions.

Ongoing

Success in this role is measured by new foundation and corporate revenue secured against your annual target, renewal and expansion revenue from existing partners, the quality of your qualified pipeline and the accuracy of your revenue forecasts.

About you

You will have experience securing significant, multi-year agreements with philanthropic foundations, corporates or institutional funders, whether through partnerships, institutional fundraising or selling technology-enabled products and services. You understand how funders and companies set priorities and decide what to back.

You'll thrive here if you:

Have personally owned and secured significant agreements through complex, multi-stage processes, including proposals and due diligence.
Can build credibility with senior leaders at foundations and corporates and influence decisions across their teams and committees.
Bring strong commercial judgement, including opportunity qualification, budgeting, pricing, negotiation and margin management.
Can translate our products into clear propositions that address a partner's strategy, impact goals or business priorities.
Are disciplined in pipeline management, forecasting and prioritising commercial effort.
Operate effectively with autonomy and ambiguity across different partner types and cultures, taking responsibility for decisions and outcomes.
Are motivated by helping governments become more effective for people and the planet.

Show us in your CV if you have:

Experience securing multi-year grants or contracts from major philanthropic foundations or bilateral and multilateral donors.
Experience building revenue-generating partnerships with technology companies or other corporates.
Experience structuring agreements that bring together a funder, a delivery partner and a government.

Don't meet every requirement? Studies show that women and people of colour are less likely to apply for roles unless they meet every qualification. We're committed to building a diverse and inclusive team, so if you're interested in the role but don't tick every box, we'd still encourage you to apply.

This probably isn't the role for you if…

Your experience is primarily in relationship management or stewardship without personal accountability for securing and signing agreements.
You're seeking a role focused on managing a team now rather than personally owning complex partnership deals.
You prefer high-volume or individual giving to a small number of large, long-cycle institutional and corporate agreements.

Our application process

We use skills-based assessments and structured interviews to focus on what predicts success in the role. Each stage is designed to give us high-quality evidence of your skills, judgement and ways of working, while giving you a clear view of the role, the team and what working at Apolitical is like.

You can see more about the stages of our hiring process on our careers page.

You can expect to hear from us, no matter the outcome, by 18th November 2026.

Using AI in your application

We embrace new technologies and encourage the use of AI in our work.

You're welcome to use AI tools to help structure and refine your application. What matters to us, though, is understanding your thinking, experience and perspective, so please make sure your application still sounds like you.

Director of Commercial Partnerships