Rowden
Partnerships Manager
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Department: Engineering
Location: Bristol, UK
Compensation: £80,000 - £100,000 / year
Description
We're building the UK's next generation engineering powerhouse, providing critical technology that strengthens national security and resilience.
We specialise in turning advances in sensing, AI, and communications into operational capability for the edge, where connectivity may be degraded or denied. Our work focuses on accelerating the deployment of technology, improving decision-making for frontline teams, and protecting people and critical assets in demanding environments.
Headquartered in Bristol, Rowden employs around 200 people and operates over 20,000 square feet of engineering and manufacturing facilities. We have a growing international footprint and are one of Europe's fastest-growing engineering businesses.
About the role
Dovetail is Rowden's edge-first software platform for configuring, assuring and managing frontline operator systems. It covers the situational awareness kit, radios and end user devices that dismounted troops and system integrators rely on in the field and is built to keep working when connectivity cannot be guaranteed, using offline first Edge Nodes, encrypted local state, signed configuration profiles and a central Edge Manager that syncs as soon as a connection becomes available.
Dovetail's growth depends as much on the ecosystem around it as on the platform itself. We enter agreements with hardware vendors, system integrators and other technology partners, and today those relationships are built one deal at a time. We need someone who can turn that into a coherent, commercially healthy network of partner companies - bringing the right hardware vendors, integrators and technology providers together around Dovetail, rather than managing a series of one-off accounts.
We're looking for a senior, commercially minded OEM lead to own that ecosystem end to end: finding the right partners, hunting down the right stakeholders inside them, running the pitch and demo, negotiating the agreement, and then growing and managing the relationship for the long term. This is a technical sales role at heart - you need to be credible in front of a partner's engineering leadership, even though you will bring in a Solutions Engineer for deep integration work.
This is a global remit with frequent international travel to meet partners where they are.
This role is based primarily in Bristol.
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Candidates must be eligible for SC clearance.
More information about security clearance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/united-kingdom-security-vetting-clearance-levels
Key areas of responsibility
- Identify, prioritise and build relationships with the OEMs, hardware vendors and system integrators that make up Dovetail's partner ecosystem.
- Find and engage the right stakeholders inside prospective partner organisations, from technical leadership through to commercial decision-makers.
- Lead the technical and commercial pitch for Dovetail, partnering with a Solutions Engineer for deep integration questions.
- Negotiate and close OEM and licensing agreements, working with legal on commercial terms, revenue share and SLAs.
- Own the long-term relationship with signed partners, including renewals, expansion and escalation management.
- Build and maintain a target account list and pipeline across the global OEM and system integrator landscape.
- Represent Dovetail at a senior level with partners, prospective partners and internal leadership.
- Act as the connective tissue between partners and Rowden's Product and Engineering teams, feeding market and competitive intelligence back into the roadmap.
- Balance the needs of partners, internal engineering and commercial or legal stakeholders, who will not always agree with each other.
- Build a repeatable playbook for onboarding, demoing to and growing OEM partners as the ecosystem scales.
Key skills, experience and behaviours
We are looking for a senior commercial practitioner with the technical credibility, judgement and relationship-building skill to build and run an OEM ecosystem end to end.
Essential
- Comfortable owning the full deal cycle: prospecting, technical pitch and demo, commercial negotiation, close and ongoing account management.
- Experience negotiating OEM, reseller or technology-licensing agreements, including commercial terms, revenue share and SLAs.
- Technically fluent enough in edge, security or platform software to hold a credible conversation with a partner's engineering leadership, and to know when to bring in a Solutions Engineer.
- Track record finding and engaging the right stakeholders inside unfamiliar organisations without a warm introduction.
- Strong CRM and pipeline discipline, with accurate forecasting.
- Comfortable reading and negotiating commercial contracts alongside Legal.
- Willing and able to travel internationally and work across time zones.
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Desirable (not essential)
- Proven track record selling or partnering via an OEM, channel or technology-licensing model, not purely direct end-user sales.
- Experience in defence, security, critical infrastructure or another regulated sector.
- Experience building an OEM or partner function from the ground up, rather than managing an already-mature programme.
- Familiarity with edge computing, IoT device management or MDM-style platforms.
- Experience with defence or public-sector procurement cycles or working alongside system integrators on MOD or NATO-aligned programmes.
About you
- You are as comfortable hunting down a cold stakeholder as you are running a renewal conversation two years into a relationship.
- You can hold a credible technical conversation, and you know exactly when to hand off to a Solutions Engineer.
- You build trust with partners by understanding their commercial and technical constraints, not just pitching at them.
- You are patient enough for a long, multi-stakeholder OEM sales cycle, and disciplined enough to keep it moving.
- You enjoy building something from scratch - this ecosystem doesn't run itself yet.
Working at Rowden
We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!
We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.
Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.
Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!
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