Strategic Partnership Development Manager (Hiring Immediately)

Strategic Partnership Development Manager

Contract type: Permanent, Full-time, 35 hours per week

Location: London, UK

UK hybrid working – a minimum of 40% of working time is spent face-to-face (London office, external meetings or travel). 60/40 hybrid working at WaterAid means roughly three days wherever you work best and two days together in person.

Salary: £47,423 per year with excellent benefits

*We offer competitive, market-aligned starting salaries. While most roles are offered at the advertised starting salary, we may adjust this in exceptional cases depending on a candidate’s experience, skills, and potential.

Change starts with water. Change starts with you.

Every day, millions of people live without clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene. WaterAid exists to change that – for everyone, everywhere. Join us, and your energy will help unlock people’s potential and create a fairer future.

About WaterAid

We’re a global federation driven by one vision: a world where everyone, everywhere has clean water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030. Powered by our values of Respect, Accountability, Courage, Collaboration, Integrity and Innovation, we work alongside communities, partners and supporters to make change happen.

About the team

The Corporate Partnerships Team is responsible for developing high value, high impact strategic partnerships with companies, where the value goes beyond financial alone to meaningfully contribute towards WaterAid’s mission, including finding ways to contribute to programmatic, policy and advocacy objectives.

About the role

As our proactive and driven Strategic Partnership Development Manager you will lead partnership development for a range of priority corporate sectors - working closely with global partnerships, programmes and policy colleagues - to secure new multi-year partnerships and drive sustainable change.

In this role, you will:

• Lead on partnership development for strategically important sectors including food and beverage and agriculture, as well as other sectors to be determined. Effectively utilising your commercial awareness and corporate partnerships expertise to present WaterAid’s partnerships offering and value-add externally to these industries.
• Develop and manage a pipeline of potential high value, annual and multi-year new business opportunities, ensuring there is sufficient lead generation, active movement and conversion to secure annual and multi-year 6-figure+ partnerships.
• Collaborate with colleagues across the WaterAid federation including partnerships, communications, programmes and advocacy to identify and develop high-quality propositions that meet both partner and WaterAid needs.
• Lead WaterAid’s presence at global events and conferences, building a network of contacts amongst companies and actively cultivating this network.
• Champion WaterAid’s commitment to equity, inclusion and safeguarding.

Requirements

To be successful, you will need:

• Proven experience in generating six-figure strategic, new business partnerships from cold in the charity sector or in a commercial setting and proven ability to meet and exceed personal targets.
• An externally focused and proactive attitude, with the energy and passion to engage people and excite them about WaterAid, alongside the ability to forge effective working relationships with stakeholders at all levels, including internal and external C-suite.
• Excellent presentation, verbal and written communication skills with an aptitude for writing high-quality and engaging proposals for a corporate audience.
• Strong working understanding of charity-corporate partnerships, corporate sustainability, Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Although not essential, we’d prefer you to have:

• Understanding and experience of international development
• Understanding of and active interest in the agriculture and food & beverage sectors, including key materially important sustainability topics.

View the full job description here

Closing date: Applications close 12:00 PM UK time on Thursday, 14th May 2026. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and the role may close earlier if a suitable candidate is identified, so we encourage you to apply as early]]> <