Partnerships & Community Manager

Location Head office, Woking.Two days in the office, three remote, plus event travel

Salary £38,000 – £42,000 depending on experience, plus company bonus

Contract Full time, permanent

Zone3 designs performance swim and triathlon equipment: wetsuits, goggles, triwear, swimwear and open water safety kit. We sell globally through a network of retailers and distributors, and direct to customers in the UK, the US and Germany.

The brand was founded in 2006 by James Lock, a professional triathlete who raced at the highest level for over five years, out of a racer's frustration at how much time is lost in transition. The first product was a pair of buoyancy shorts in 2007, a category the rest of the sport now makes. The first wetsuits followed in 2009 with the Speed Cuff, which became an industry standard. Every product since carries the same standard.

Zone3 is employee-owned and independent. We received the King's Award for Enterprise in International Trade in 2024, and the Aspire was rated 98% by 220 Triathlon in 2025, the highest score they have given a wetsuit.

The team is small enough that what you do is visible. We pull as one effort here rather than a set of separate jobs, and the part each role plays in getting us where we are going is recognised. We want a range of backgrounds and experience around the table. If you can do this job, we want to hear from you.

Our partners are Zone3 at the water's edge. Ambassadors, athletes, influencers, clubs and event partners across the UK, the US and Germany, all of them talking to the people we want to reach, in places we cannot reach on our own.

The programmes exist and they work. They were also built for a smaller business, and they now need someone to look past the current set-up and sharpen it for three markets. That is the job. Not keeping a calendar ticking over, but deciding who Zone3 should be working with, what those relationships are worth, and how to get far more out of them than we do today.

The roster and the partner budget are yours to shape. You build the picture of what is working, you decide what should change. Nobody here will know this programme better than you, and the recommendations will be yours.

• The ambassador and influencer programme across the UK, the US and Germany. Who is on it, what they receive, what they produce, and what it returns.

• Growth of the roster. Finding and assessing partners who move the brand, and recommending who we sign and who we let go.

• Athlete onboarding, and the comms plan that keeps partners active across the year rather than going quiet after launch.

• Our club partnerships and their digital comms plan.

• Event marketing, deliverables and the digital comms plan. On event days you are on site with your partners, working the activation in person and making sure real content comes out of the weekend.

• The content that comes back. Briefing partners properly so the work is usable, and handing it to the social and creative team. Some filming, and occasionally being in front of the camera yourself.

• What the programme returns. Reach, engagement, content produced and sales influenced. You propose the measure, you report it, and it becomes the basis of the budget case for next year.

The partners you would work with most closely are Swim Serpentine, Great North Swim and Active Training World (ATW). We also partner with Level Water, the charity that provides one-to-one swimming lessons for children with disabilities aged 4 to 11. You will be on the ground at all of it.

We are not hiring someone to inherit this and carry on. The first year is building the machine: a roster worth having, a comms plan that holds across three markets, and numbers that tell us what any of it is worth. Get that right and the remit grows with it. The calls this role recommends today are the ones we would want it making on its own.

One thing matters more than everything else on this page. You have built or substantially grown an ambassador, athlete or influencer programme for a brand in sport, endurance or active lifestyle, and you can show us what it produced.

• Two years or more running partner, ambassador or athlete programmes for a brand. Agency-side counts if you were the one holding the relationships.

• Evidence that you grew something. Roster quality, output, reach, sales influenced. Bring the numbers.

• You have brought partners on and you have ended partnerships. Partner agreements and working to a budget are familiar ground.

• The judgement to say no. Most inbound partnership requests are not worth having, and knowing which ones are is most of the job.

• Comfort operating across markets. The UK, the US and Germany behave differently and your planning should reflect that.

• A strong communicator who picks up the phone. A lot of this job happens in conversation and in person, not over email.

• Strong writing. Briefs, comms plans and partner communications come from you, and they need to sound like us.

• The organisation to run several programmes at once without any of them going quiet.

• Willingness to travel, to work event weekends through the season, and to be on camera now and then.

• A full, clean driving licence.

• A background in triathlon, open water swimming, running or cycling. You do not have to race, but you should understand the people who do.

• German, or another European language.

Send your CV and a short note about one partnership you built and what it returned to the brand.

For the full list of employee benefits, visit zone3.com/pages/careers