Role Summary
The Partnerships Success Director is responsible for the strategic leadership and overall success of Unibuddy’s customer-facing and external partnerships. This senior role oversees the Customer Experience function spanning client success, implementation, scaled enablement, and technical support, while also owning non-client strategic relationships with sector partners such as UCAS, Gecko and other higher education focused partners.
The Partnerships Success Director ensures that both institutional partnership customers and wider sector partnerships thrive, delivering measurable outcomes, strong adoption, and long-term value. They act as a connector between Unibuddy and the higher education ecosystem, ensuring external relationships translate into impact, innovation, and growth.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership
- Collaborate with the Exec, Product, Marketing and Partnerships teams on the development and iteration of our vision and strategy for all partnership activity, ensuring alignment with organisational goals and revenue growth.
- Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team across customer success, implementation, enablement, and technical support.
- Represent Unibuddy externally as a sector thought leader and trusted partner.
Customer & Client Success
- Oversee delivery of measurable value and ROI for institutional partners, ensuring strong adoption, renewal, and retention.
- Ensure consistent, high-quality implementation of Unibuddy products, with timely customer time-to-value.
- Champion customer insights internally to influence product roadmap and marketing strategies.
External Partnerships
- Build and manage non-client, strategic partnerships with organisations such as UCAS, Gecko, relevant market / sector bodies, and any other external partnerships in place at any time.
- Negotiate agreements that unlock growth opportunities, raise brand visibility, and strengthen Unibuddy’s role in the HE ecosystem.
- Develop joint initiatives with partners that enhance customer experience and market impact.
Operational Excellence
- Drive collaboration between Client Success, Product, Tech, Marketing, and Sales to maximise value from all partnerships.
- Establish clear KPIs and dashboards to monitor adoption, engagement, renewals, and partner impact.
- Embed scalable processes and frameworks for implementation, enablement, and support.
Success Metrics
- Gross revenue and logo retention across the customer base.
- Speed of implementation and customer time-to-value.
- Adoption and engagement levels across all products (‘health score’).
- Strength and impact of strategic, non-client partnerships.
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- Customer and partner satisfaction at both operational and executive levels (‘NPS’).
Essential
Skills & Experience
- Proven senior leadership experience in partnerships, customer success, or commercial strategy.
- Ability to take a high level perspective as well as being ‘in the detail’ and ‘in the work’.
- Strong track record managing high-value client relationships and sector partnerships.
- Exceptional stakeholder management, negotiation, and storytelling skills.
- Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams (customer success, enablement, support).
- Data-driven mindset with ability to link strategy to measurable outcomes.
- Experience in a SaaS or similar environment.
Desirable
- Deep knowledge of the Higher Education and/or EdTech sector.
- Established networks with HE sector (or similar) bodies (UCAS, other edtech provider partners).
- Comfortable operating in a fast-scaling, global business environment.
Personal Profile
The success of this role and Unibuddy will rely on a clear set of personal characteristics that we will be assessing for through the interview process. These go beyond skills / experience and capture the mindset and behaviours of a highly engaged, and highly engaging leader:
- Purpose-driven - you are able to see beyond day-to-day tasks and are motivated by Unibuddy’s mission and impact.
- Proactive and accountable - you demonstrate through your career your ability and willingness to take ownership, be proactive, and follow-through reliably.
- Curious and growth-oriented - you embrace learning, ask insightful questions, and seek to improve and grow yourself, your team and the business.
- Collaborative and inclusive - you value diverse perspectives, build trust, and bring people together across functions and levels.
- Resilient and adaptable - you maintain composure and positivity through change, ambiguity, and setbacks.
- Authentic and transparent - you communicate openly, role model integrity, and facilitate environments where psychological safety flourishes.
- Strategic AND Hands-on - you’re clearly able to balance long-term vision with willingness to get involved in detail where needed.
- Customer and partner obsessed - you’re genuinely interested in the success of clients and external partners, demonstrating high levels of both empathy and commercial awareness.
- Data-informed storyteller - you use insight to influence and inspire, making information meaningful to stakeholders of all experience levels, cultural backgrounds and personal interests.
- Energising presence - you bring passion, energy, and positivity that motivates the team and partners alike.
What We Can Offer
- Competitive salary
- Highly flexible work culture
- Private healthcare
- Life insurance coverage
- Pension matched up to 6%
- Generous time off: 25 days of annual leave, plus an additional special day for a personal occasion (like your birthday, engagement, or wedding), extra days based on tenure, and 4 additional days at the end of the year for a company-wide shutdown
- Significantly enhanced parental leave: Including maternity, paternity, and adoption leave
- Equipment: A MacBook and all the tools you need to do your best work
- Inclusive and supportive culture: We pride ourselves on our diverse team, with 55 employees across the UK, Europe, US, India, and Canada.
