Partnerships Manager

About This Opportunity

We are representing a confidential fintech organization that is building a game-changing M&A platform serving the small business market. Our client is backed by one of Europe's leading SME lenders and is creating a referral channel from scratch to connect business owners with acquisition opportunities.

This is a genuine build role. You'll design and own the introducer network that brings sellers to the platform—accountants, solicitors, wealth managers, and brokers who meet retiring business owners long before anyone else does. Right now, nearly all leads come from internal sources. Your job is to change that and create a scalable, technology-enabled referral engine.

Responsibilities

You will build the introducer network by identifying and winning partnerships with accountancy practices, corporate finance boutiques, solicitors, wealth managers, and business transfer agents. You'll do the outbound yourself: find the firm, get the meeting, make the case, and follow up until referrals start arriving. You'll design what the partnership looks like—how referrals are made, what partners receive, and how they're kept informed.

Making referrals actually arrive is where the real work begins. A signed agreement means nothing until clients come through. You'll own the ongoing relationship work: regular contact, briefing partner teams, tracking referral volume and quality by partner, and being honest about which relationships aren't producing so we can stop spending time on them.

You'll make the channel scale by judging every partnership on whether it adds referrals without adding manual work. You'll identify which partner technology is worth integrating—practice management software, accounting platforms, tracked referral links, and portals that let firms refer clients without leaving their own tools. You won't build these yourself, but you'll identify them, make the commercial case, and scope them with the product team.

You'll work the existing network at the parent organization, which already has broker relationships and partnerships across the SME economy. You'll also build a focused event programme—succession planning gatherings, accountancy events, and business owner peer communities—but you'll judge them on referrals, not attendance, and stop attending the ones that don't produce.

Finally, you'll prove the channel pays by establishing what a referral actually costs once your time, partner incentives, and events are counted, and how many convert into signed mandates.

What We're Looking For

Essential:

• Around 4+ years in partnerships, channel, or business development (ideally B2B) where you built or substantially grew a referral channel rather than inherited one that already worked
• You've done the full cycle yourself: identified target firms, got the meetings, agreed the terms, and managed the relationship afterwards
• Background in M&A, marketplaces, business broking, or business transfer
• You understand the work starts after the agreement is signed, and you have the discipline to keep a channel warm over months rather than weeks
• Numerate and honest about performance—you track referrals by partner, know which relationships are producing, and say so when one isn't
• You think in systems as well as relationships and can tell the difference between a partnership that scales and one that only works while you're pushing it
• Comfortable specifying technology without building it—you can look at a partner's tools and scope integrations clearly enough for a product team to build
• Genuinely hands-on: you'll build the target list, send the emails, run the meetings, and keep the CRM straight yourself
• Commercial thinker with a bias for action, comfortable navigating ambiguity in an early-stage venture

Bonus:

• Experience with accountancy, legal, or wealth management channels specifically
• Experience running an event programme with commercial targets attached
• Familiarity with the UK succession and exit planning landscape
• Comfortable treating a CRM as a discipline, ideally HubSpot
• You've shipped a partner integration, embedded referral flow, or marketplace listing, or worked closely with a product team on one
• Familiar with software UK accountancy practices and advisers actually work in, such as Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, IRIS, or Dext

How We Work With You

Candidates apply directly through Get A Job.ai. Our talent team screens applications and conducts an initial interview to understand your background and fit for the role. If we both agree there's a strong match, we submit your profile to our client for consideration. Please do not attempt to contact the client directly, as all communication is managed through our recruitment process to ensure a smooth and professional experience for everyone involved.

Pay

Pay via Get A Job.ai: £55,000–£80,000 plus annual performance-based bonus.

Equal Opportunity: Get A Job.ai is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive recruitment process. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or any other protected characteristic.