About WhiteSpace
WhiteSpace helps clients radically improve their ability to navigate complex decisions. We develop AI-powered, custom-built applications that enable better and faster decision-making, with use cases spanning energy, manufacturing, logistics and health. We are a fast-growing scale-up (~€6M revenue, ~30 people) with an international, diverse team based in The Hague. We are direct and transparent in how we work, no black boxes, in our software or in our numbers.
Role Summary:
The Principal Consultant - Partnerships & Accounts owns WhiteSpace's growth beyond oil & gas: the alliances and introductions that open the door, the clients worth approaching directly, and the accounts that follow from all of it. This is a role built to build, not just to run - land the work, own the relationships, and grow them.
You report to the Innovation & Account Lead and work alongside the Sales Lead and the Tech Lead. You stay close enough to delivery to be credible in the room and honest about what we can build, and you can turn what a client means into something our developers can deliver.
Key Responsibilities:
Partner Channel Ownership:
- Turn our existing warm introductions into a managed channel with named targets, agreed goals, and a joint pipeline.
- Build and hold the alliance relationships outside oil & gas, starting from the alliance already in motion.
- Shape joint propositions and joint delivery models with partners.
Account Ownership & Growth:
- Own the relationship side of non-oil & gas accounts and be the trusted voice a client calls first.
- Drive adoption, expand scope, and keep churn at zero.
- Bring the client-facing consultants on the account close to the relationship, so it never depends on you alone.
Commercial Ownership:
- Own pricing, scope, and margin on the accounts and partnerships you hold.
- See where a client would get more from what we do, and shape the follow-on work.
- Judge which opportunities are repeatable and worth pursuing, and which turn into a bespoke rebuild every time.
Translation & Team Development:
- Turn what a client means into something our developers can build correctly, and turn what the team delivers back into language the client recognises.
- Bring our consultants and developers up the curve on client engagement and commercial judgement.
Key Interfaces to Manage
- Partners & clients: You own these relationships. The partner alliances and the client accounts outside oil & gas are yours to build, hold, and grow.
- Innovation & Account Lead: Your manager. Sets the direction for the account portfolio and gives you the technical and delivery support behind every engagement.
- Sales Lead: Runs new-logo sales for oil & gas and the associated commercial engine. Non-oil & gas is a separate track that sits with you.
- Tech Lead: Signs off on proposals before they reach a client. You bring the scope; the Tech Lead validates feasibility, team, and timing.
Competencies & Experience
To succeed in this role, candidates should demonstrate:
Commercial Track Record
- A carried commercial mandate - you have owned client relationships and carried a revenue target, accountable for winning work, keeping it, and growing it.
- Experience turning early-stage partner introductions into a structured channel with real pipeline behind it.
Judgement About Where We Play
- You can sit with a client, understand their problem, and judge whether it is work we can repeat - not just whether we can do it, but whether it scales.
- Beyond oil & gas we win on repeatability and recurring revenue, not by chasing the deepest, most specialised problem in the room.
Technology & Domain Fluency
- At home in AI and software delivery teams, without needing to build software yourself.
- Exposure to planning and optimisation challenges in sectors such as utilities and grids, mining, renewables, or supply chain is highly valued.
Personality & Traits
We are looking for someone who is:
- Humble yet confident - grounded, but not afraid to take a stand for the client's benefit.
- Comfortable building - in year one you have one strong partner and an initial pipeline, and you get energised by rapidly expanding beyond that.
- Politically astute - you read the room and the politics behind it: who really decides, where a partner's incentives sit, when to move first and when to wait.
- Proactive - you spot the opening before it is offered and create momentum rather than waiting for it.
- Direct and credible - honest about what we can and cannot do, because a partnership built on oversell does not survive the first delivery.
- Collaborative - you work easily across functions and bring others close to the relationships you own.
Why Join WhiteSpace?
This role offers a chance to start something new: a sector that is new to WhiteSpace, with an alliance already in motion to build from. Whoever takes it defines what non-oil & gas becomes here - the accounts, the partnerships, the way we sell into a market we are only beginning to enter. If the interesting part of your career has been building something rather than maintaining it, this is a seat designed around that.
Terms & location:
- This is a permanent staff position, based in The Netherlands.
- We offer a hybrid work environment and trust you can balance remote & office work.
- Fluency in English is required; mastery of Dutch is a plus; willingness to travel as the relationships require.
- Base salary ~€100k/y plus holiday allowance and pension contribution, with a commercial variable component under the group framework and commission on the accounts and partnerships you own.
- We have an annual profit-sharing scheme dependent on company performance, individual delivery, and alignment with company values.
- We also intend to offer equity participation as part of our commitment to sharing in the company's future success.