Community & Partnerships Lead

Job Description

About upLYFT

upLYFT is building movement intelligence through wearable technology. We combine smart clothing, embedded sensing, and software to help people better understand how they move across performance, rehabilitation, and health. We move quickly, intensely and obsessively!

The role

We are hiring a Community & Partnerships Lead to build and grow the upLYFT community from the ground up.

This is a hands-on startup role for someone who can operate across community, partnerships and growth. You will lead our runner and athlete community in London, manage key external relationships, and help turn community engagement into real business momentum. You should be someone who understands runners and athlete culture, is comfortable building relationships from scratch, and can execute at pace.

What you’ll do

• Build and grow upLYFT’s runner and athlete community in London, with scope to scale this internationally over time
• Manage and run upLYFT’s community run club
• Build relationships with run clubs, coaches, athlete communities, gyms, fitness centres, and sports organisations
• Lead partnership development with gyms, fitness operators, athlete clubs, wellness businesses, and aligned brands
• Plan and run events, activations, demos, pop-ups, and community experiences
• Build and manage an ambassador and community captain network
• Turn community engagement into measurable outcomes such as trials, referrals, product adoption, and pre-orders
• Own the partnerships pipeline from outreach through to onboarding and relationship management
• Gather community and partner feedback and feed it back into product, brand, and go-to-market strategy
• Support content capture from events and community activity, including testimonials, athlete stories, and partner moments
• Track KPIs across growth, engagement, partnerships, events, and conversion

What we’re looking for

• Strong understanding of running, fitness, or athlete communities
• Experience in community, partnerships, business development, events, growth, or brand activations
• Strong relationship-building and communication skills
• Comfortable operating in an early-stage startup where you need to be both strategic and hands-on
• Commercial mindset with the ability to turn community into tangible business outcomes
• Highly organised, proactive, and able to manage multiple priorities
• Existing relationships with London run clubs, coaches, gyms, or performance communities
• Experience in sports technology, wearables, health technology, or consumer fitness
• Track record in building a community function from scratch

Why join upLYFT

• Competitive salary plus meaningful equity in a rapidly scaling health-tech startup.
• 25 days paid holiday + bank holidays.
• Real impact, fast – ownership and autonomy
• Lab playground with bleeding edge tech – London office loaded with sensors, 3-D printers, and all the prototyping tech you'd ever need.
• Passport stamps – Collaborate with partners in Japan and Hong Kong; optional travel if you fancy sushi + dim sum.
• Backed to win – Supported by top UK & HK VCs who love big, audacious health-tech bets.

Apply

To apply, send your CV and a short note on why this role fits you to [[email protected]] .