Institutional Partnerships Acquisition Lead

About Slate Systems Lab Group

Slate Systems Lab Group (Slate Lab) is an environmental intelligence infrastructure company building systems that transform satellite, geospatial, weather, climate, and other environmental signals into structured, usable and programmable intelligence.

We sit between environmental data and institutional decision-making, helping organisations understand how environmental conditions translate into financial, operational and portfolio-level risks.

Our infrastructure is being developed for institutions across financial services, insurance, agriculture, energy, water and climate finance, with a particular focus on enabling organisations to integrate environmental intelligence into existing risk assessment, monitoring, underwriting, compliance and decision-making systems.

Our active subsidiary, Farmslate, applies this infrastructure to agriculture and financial services, helping financial institutions better understand and manage environmental and climate-related exposure within agricultural portfolios.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced, highly connected Institutional Partnerships & Customer Acquisition Lead to join Slate Lab on a contract basis.

This is not primarily an operations or traditional sales role.

We are looking for someone who already understands how large financial institutions operate and, importantly, knows the people and teams that make risk, credit, underwriting, sustainability, portfolio management and related decisions within banks and insurance companies.

The successful candidate will be responsible for opening doors, creating high-value institutional relationships, generating qualified opportunities and converting those relationships into commercial conversations, pilots and ultimately customers.

You should be comfortable speaking with senior executives and functional leaders within banks, insurers and other financial institutions, understanding their risk and business challenges, and positioning Slate Lab's environmental intelligence infrastructure as a solution to those challenges.

This role is particularly suited to someone who has:

• Strong existing relationships across banks, insurance companies, DFIs or financial institutions
• Experience working with risk, credit, underwriting, portfolio, ESG/sustainability, strategy or innovation teams
• A track record of originating institutional relationships or business opportunities
• The ability to get meetings with decision-makers rather than relying entirely on cold outreach
• A strong understanding of how financial institutions evaluate technology, risk infrastructure and new products
• The commercial confidence to move a conversation from introduction to commercial engagement

Key Responsibilities

1. Institutional Customer Acquisition

• Identify and engage priority banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions that could benefit from Slate Lab's infrastructure.
• Leverage existing relationships and professional networks to secure introductions to relevant decision-makers.
• Build and manage a pipeline of institutional prospects.
• Lead initial commercial conversations and help qualify opportunities.
• Convert institutional interest into structured discovery sessions, demonstrations, pilots, proof-of-concepts and commercial opportunities.

2. Risk & Financial Institution Relationships

Develop relationships with relevant teams, including:

• Chief Risk Officers and risk teams
• Credit risk teams
• Enterprise risk teams
• Portfolio risk teams
• Insurance underwriting and risk teams
• Sustainability/ESG teams
• Climate risk teams
• Strategy and innovation teams
• Digital transformation teams
• Agricultural finance and SME banking teams
• Investment and impact teams

The goal is not simply to sell a product, but to also understand where environmental intelligence can become part of an institution's existing risk and decision-making infrastructure.

3. Market Development

• Identify institutional pain points that Slate Lab can solve.
• Gather market intelligence from conversations with banks and insurers.
• Identify emerging needs around climate risk, environmental exposure, portfolio monitoring, ESG, underwriting, agricultural risk and regulatory reporting.
• Feed customer insights back to the product and intelligence teams to influence product development and positioning.
• Identify opportunities for new use cases, partnerships and integrations.

4. Partnership Development

• Develop strategic relationships with banks, insurers, financial technology companies, development finance institutions and ecosystem partners.
• Identify potential channel, distribution and technology partnerships.
• Support negotiation and development of partnership structures, pilots, LOIs, commercial agreements and other institutional engagements.

5. Customer Engagement & Conversion

Work closely with the Founder and Slate Lab's technical and intelligence teams to:

• Prepare institutional presentations and demonstrations.
• Translate customer problems into relevant Slate Lab use cases.
• Coordinate technical discovery sessions.
• Support pilot design and execution.
• Maintain momentum throughout the customer acquisition process.
• Help move prospects from initial conversations to signed pilots and commercial contracts.

What Success Looks Like

This role will be measured primarily by institutional traction and customer acquisition, rather than internal administrative output.

Success may include:

• Opening meaningful conversations with priority banks and insurers.
• Securing meetings with senior risk and business decision-makers.
• Building a qualified institutional sales pipeline.
• Generating new pilot and proof-of-concept opportunities.
• Supporting conversion of pilots into commercial engagements.
• Developing strategic partnerships that expand Slate Lab's market access.
• Establishing Slate Lab as a credible environmental intelligence partner within financial institutions.

Ideal Candidate

We are looking for someone who combines relationships, commercial judgment and institutional understanding.

You should have:

• 3+ years of relevant experience in banking, insurance, fintech, risk, consulting, financial services, enterprise technology, climate finance or a related field.
• Demonstrable relationships within banks and/or insurance companies.
• Strong understanding of institutional decision-making and procurement processes.
• Experience engaging senior stakeholders and executives.
• Experience originating or developing enterprise partnerships or institutional business.
• Strong understanding of risk, credit, underwriting, portfolio management, ESG/climate risk or financial services.
• Excellent communication, presentation and negotiation skills.
• Strong commercial instincts and the ability to identify opportunities from conversations.
• Ability to work independently and operate in an early-stage environment.
• High credibility, professionalism and relationship-building ability.

Particularly valuable

Experience working directly with or selling into:

• Risk departments
• Credit departments
• Insurance underwriting teams
• Climate/ESG teams
• Agricultural finance teams
• Portfolio management teams
• Digital transformation teams
• Innovation teams
• Development finance institutions

Experience with enterprise SaaS, data infrastructure, risk technology, geospatial intelligence, climate technology or financial technology would be an advantage.

What We Are Looking For Beyond the CV

We are especially interested in someone who can credibly say:

“I know the people who need this, I understand their problems, and I can get Slate Lab into the room.”

You do not necessarily need to be a traditional salesperson.

You may be a Agribanker, risk professional, insurance executive, management consultant, fintech leader, enterprise partnerships professional or industry connector who has built a strong network across financial institutions.

What matters most is your ability to turn relationships and institutional knowledge into real commercial opportunities.

Engagement

Engagement: Contract, with potential to be full-time

Role: Institutional Partnerships & Customer Acquisition Lead

Working model: Remote, with availability for institutional meetings

Location: Nigeria, with a focus on financial institutions across Nigeria and potentially wider Africa

The engagement will be structured around clear commercial and customer acquisition deliverables, with the possibility of extension or transition into a longer-term relationship based on performance and business needs.

How to Apply

Please send your CV to career@joinslate.today and a short note explaining your experience working with banks, insurance companies or financial institutions and 3–5 examples of the types of institutions, teams or senior stakeholders you have relationships with (you do not need to disclose confidential information)

You can also apply here on LinkedIn, but include in the CV the above required details