Founding Partnerships Lead (UK)

Work is being rewritten, and the people holding the pen are the ones who actually run it.

With enterprise-grade governance, flexible model choice, and a collaborative interface for humans and agents to work together, Dust empowers AI Operators at the world’s fastest-moving companies to rewire how work gets done.

With 70%+ weekly active users, people stick with Dust as much as they do with Slack and Notion. We don't get piloted and shelved. We land once, and spread. We're at an exciting stage of our journey, and growing fast.

We're serving great customers like Datadog, 1Password, Cursor, Clay, Vanta and Persona, and aim to x5 our growth by the end of 2026.

Dust is backed by Sequoia with a determined team of optimists (coming from Stripe, OpenAI, and Stanford) who like to focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously while doing so. The Generalist named us among the Future 50.

Dust is seeking a Founding Partnerships to build our partner ecosystem in the UK from scratch. This is a business development role at its core: your job is to identify, engage, and activate the partners who will become a meaningful source of pipeline and revenue for Dust in the UK market.

We've proven the partner motion in France (€1.5M+ ARR in under a year, strong SI and reseller traction). Now we need someone to figure out what works in the UK, where the landscape, buyer expectations, and partner ecosystem are fundamentally different.

This is a 0-to-1 role. There is no existing UK partner program, no playbook, no team. You'll be the first person on the ground, responsible for building relationships, closing early partnership agreements, and proving that partners can generate real pipeline for Dust. You'll work cross-functionally with Sales, Field Marketing, Growth, Community, the France Partnerships team, and the Executive Team to make this happen.

All types of partnerships are in scope: resellers, system integrators, consultancies, agencies, tech alliances, affiliates, community partners, and anything else that drives results. We care about what works, not what fits a predefined category.

This role has a path to leadership. As you prove out partner-market fit and demonstrate impact, there will be opportunity to build and lead a UK partnerships team. We're looking for someone who can start as a hands-on builder with the ambition to grow into a team leader.

• Build Dust's UK partner ecosystem from zero. Identify, qualify, and recruit the partners best positioned to reach B2B SaaS and Fintech buyers in the UK, across any partner type

• Drive partners to pipeline. This isn't about signing logos. Your success is measured by partners generating qualified opportunities, co-selling with Dust AEs, and closing deals. Own the full journey from first conversation to first partner-sourced deal

• Develop and test partnership models that work for the UK market. Leverage what exists from France (program tiers, enablement, Wesype as distributor) but be willing to reinvent where the market demands it

• Create activation playbooks that take partners from signed agreement to actively selling. Build the training, enablement, and co-selling infrastructure needed to make partners effective

• Own UK partnership pipeline and revenue targets, with latitude to experiment with creative deal structures, incentive models, and go-to-market approaches

• Work hand-in-hand with UK Sales (AEs and BDRs) to ensure partners are pipeline accelerators. Build deal routing, co-selling motions, and account mapping that the sales team actually uses

• Collaborate with Field Marketing (Events, Content, Community) to build joint events, co-branded content, and community activations that serve both partner development and demand generation

• Stay tightly connected with the France Partnerships team to share learnings, adapt proven playbooks, and maintain consistency where it matters

• Partner with Growth Marketing to turn partner activity into scalable demand: co-hosted webinars, joint case studies, partner-led content, and event-driven pipeline

• Coordinate with Product and Engineering on integration priorities, partner feedback, and joint solution development where relevant

• 5+ years in partnerships, business development, or channel sales in B2B SaaS. Experience in fintech, developer tools, productivity platforms, or AI/ML is a strong plus

• Proven 0-to-1 builder. You've built partner programs or BD motions from scratch, not just managed existing ones. You know what it takes to go from a blank page to real pipeline

• Track record of driving revenue through partners. Specific examples where partnerships you built directly drove measurable pipeline, customer acquisition, or closed revenue

• Experience working with B2B SaaS and/or Fintech ecosystems in the UK. You understand the landscape: who the key SIs, consultancies, agencies, and ecosystem players are

• Cross-functional operating experience. You've worked effectively across Sales, Marketing, Product, and leadership teams in a fast-moving environment

• Entrepreneurial and scrappy. You thrive in ambiguity, create structure from scratch, and move fast with limited resources. You're comfortable being a team of one before you're a team of many

• Familiarity with the AI/ML landscape and enterprise AI deployment is strongly preferred

• Business development instinct. You naturally think about how to turn a relationship into a pipeline source. You're not just a relationship manager; you're a dealmaker

• Strategic thinker. You can zoom out to design a program with long-term vision while executing tactical partnerships today

• Exceptional relationship builder. You build trust quickly with partners, internal stakeholders, and executives across cultures and time zones

• Data-driven. You use metrics to prioritize, make decisions based on evidence, and can clearly report on impact

• Strong communicator. Excellent written and verbal skills, comfortable presenting to executives, partners, and cross-functional teams

• Existing network in the UK B2B SaaS and Fintech ecosystem (SIs, agencies, consultancies, investment funds, community leaders)

• Background in AI, developer-first, or API-first companies

• Prior experience hiring or mentoring partnerships team members

• Understanding of the competitive landscape

• Competitive OTE compensation + significant equity package at a Sequoia-backed startup

• Health benefits for you and your dependents

• New MacBook Pro or Linux machine, monitor, keyboard, etc.

• Opportunity to travel to Paris HQ regularly

• Regular team events and off-sites

We're prioritizing building our team with an in-person culture at our offices in Paris, San Francisco, and New York because we value the magic that happens when talented people work closely together.

We have an office-first culture. Some of the best things about building at Dust are the energy, the fast decisions, and the unexpected conversations that unlock a hard problem, which happen because we are in the same room. Being together is not a formality, it is how we do our best work, and it is something we actively protect.
That said, we hire people with strong judgement and we extend that trust to how they manage their time. When working from home makes more sense for what you need to get done that day, we trust you to make that call.

The models are powerful enough. What's missing is the product layer where AI meets how companies actually work. That's what we're building: the infrastructure that lets any team turn scattered knowledge and tools into coordinated execution with agents they build, own, and run themselves.

We use Dust ourselves every day. We get to shape how humans and agents collaborate while solving our own problems with the product we ship. That loop is rare, and it's why we move fast.

If you're excited about defining a new category and want to join a determined team of optimists who focus on users, ship fast, and don't take themselves too seriously, we'd love to talk.

Even if you don't check every box in our requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and we're more interested in your potential and passion than a perfect match to our checklist.

Learn how we think and work.

• Our product constitution, a story about our mission

• Agents at work - Latent Space, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024

• LLMs reasoning and agentic capabilities over time - dotAI, podcast with our cofounder, Stanislas Polu, 2024