Ecosystem & Partnerships Lead

£60,000 - £65,000 (offers are expected to be made towards the bottom of the band) plus excellent benefits. We are recruiting for an Ecosystem & Partnerships Lead to join Nesta's Mission Studio. Mission Studio is creating the future of mission-driven tech startups. We're tackling the UK's toughest social challenges - from net zero to obesity - by building commercially successful businesses. We have a great team of ex-founders, venture designers, builders and experienced studio operators and are looking for an exceptional Venture Ecosystem Lead to add to our team as we move into our next iteration of growth.

As our venture Ecosystem & Partnerships Lead, you will help us rapidly build and mobilise networks around the ventures we are creating. As we develop new investment theses, you’ll work out who we need to know, from sector experts and potential users to prospective founders, and find creative ways to reach and engage them. You’ll be part researcher, part relationship-builder and part talent scout: quickly getting the lay of the land in new sectors, opening doors, building communities and developing relationships that give our venture teams access to the right people at the right time.

Who You Are:

• Essential skills
• Exceptional network builder: You have a track record of rapidly building strong partnerships or networks, with individuals and organisations. You’re a natural connector who enjoys meeting people, joining the dots, and creating relationships that lead to valuable opportunities and collaboration. This could look like: 3+ year experience in a partnerships, community, business development or similar role.
• Ecosystem and stakeholder mapping: You are excellent at getting up to speed on an unfamiliar market, sector or topic. You can quickly identify the key stakeholders: organisations, individuals, communities, events, networks and centres of influence within an ecosystem, and understand how they relate to one another.
• Proactive outreach, relationship development and management: You’re confident building relationships from scratch through cold outreach, warm introductions, events and networks. You know how to turn initial conversations into lasting relationships, and manage them systematically so the right people are re-engaged at the right time.
• CRM: You build and maintain repeatable processes (like CRM hygiene and re-engagement cadences) rather than relying on memory and instinct alone.
• Community building and engagement: You have experience bringing people together around a shared interest or challenge, and turning networks of contacts into useful, engaged communities.
• Talent scouting: You have a strong eye for people and can identify talent across key roles: founders, advisors and collaborators. Experience in founder scouting, executive search, startup recruitment or similar is a plus.
• Existing network: Ideally, existing relationships and exposure to either the UK startup ecosystem, or ecosystems within Nesta's mission areas: Family life & Early years, Health and Food systems, or Climate and Home ownership.

Core competencies

• A super-connector: You are energised by people and relationships. You remember who does what, spot useful connections others miss and instinctively think, “I know someone we should speak to.”
• Proactive and externally oriented: You don’t wait for the network to come to you. You are happy getting out into the market, attending the right events, speaking to new people and creating connections for Mission Studio.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: One month you might be mapping the ecosystem around a healthcare problem; the next, exploring a completely different technology or market. You enjoy starting with a blank page and quickly working out where to look and who to speak to.
• Commercial and strategic judgement: You can distinguish between a prestigious contact and a genuinely useful one. Able to prioritise ruthlessly between urgent venture-team requests and longer-term ecosystem investment - and communicate trade-offs when both can't happen at once.
• Clear communicator: You have excellent written and verbal communication skills and can engage credibly with key stakeholders from prospective founders and users to senior industry leaders and investors.
• Collaborative: You can work closely with studio leadership, venture leads and occasionally founders to understand what they need, and translate that into practical outcomes.

What You’ll Do:

You’ll work across Mission Studio's portfolio, helping us quickly build the relationships/ecosystems required to explore new investment theses, validate opportunities and build/scale great ventures. You will:

• Build ecosystems around new investment theses.
• Rapidly map the key people, organisations, communities and events within new sectors or problem spaces.
• Identify who we need to engage – from experts and users to potential founders, partners and operators – and develop practical routes to reach them.
• Build and manage relationships, and activate communities.
• Proactively build strong relationships through outreach, introductions, events and partnerships.
• Own our approach to CRM and relationship management, keeping key contacts engaged and bringing them into our work at the right time.
• Create and manage communities of experts, users, founders and other stakeholders around priority themes.
• Work with the Design team to engage these communities effectively in research, validation, co-design and venture/business development.
• Scout exceptional founders and talent.
• Work with our Strategy & Ops Lead to identify and build pipelines of high-potential founders and other talent within the areas we are exploring (note: we often meet potential founders through early expert research).
• Support targeted recruitment and scouting campaigns, using networks, referrals, events and proactive outreach to reach exceptional people.
• Be Mission Studio's eyes and ears in the market.
• Represent Mission Studio at relevant events and ecosystem gatherings, building relationships and bringing useful intelligence back to the team.
• Stay close to emerging people, organisations and trends, proactively spotting opportunities, connections and partnerships that could strengthen our work.

What we offer:

• Location: At least 2 days a week at our Thames-side, Blackfriars office in London with the freedom to work remotely on other days.
• Start Date: ASAP.

Who You'll Report To: Strategy and Operations Lead.

Note: This is an individual contributor role focused on hands-on relationship-building and outreach execution, not team management.

To apply for this role, please submit your application before 8:00 am on 28th September 2026. We plan for introductory calls to be held w/c 5th October 2026 with first round interviews to take place around w/c 12th October.

About Nesta: We are Nesta, the UK’s innovation agency for social good. We design, test and scale solutions to society’s biggest problems. Our three missions are to give every child a fair start, help people live healthy lives, and create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and the planet. For over 20 years, we have worked to support, encourage and inspire innovation. We work in three roles: as an innovation partner working with frontline organisations to design and test new solutions, as a venture builder supporting new and early stage businesses, and as a system shaper creating the conditions for innovation. Harnessing the rigour of science and the creativity of design, we work relentlessly to change millions of lives for the better. Find out more at nesta.org.uk.

At Nesta, we believe that a diverse workforce leads to an organisation that is more innovative, more creative and gets better results. We want our workforce to represent the diversity of the people and communities we serve. We also want our workplace to be one where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, and where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop. This means that when we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. It also means that we are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential employees may need to in order to be successful. We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working, including working from home, compressed or part-time hours, job shares and other arrangements. Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.