Partnerships Manager in Bristol

Our client is a defence technology company. 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, our client 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 our client'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.