Founding Partnerships Lead (UK)

ABOUT DUST Work is being rewritten, and the people holding the pen are the ones who actually run it. Dust is the multiplayer AI platform for human-agent collaboration. It gives companies a shared workspace where teams can build, deploy, and manage AI agents connected to their company knowledge, tools, and workflows. 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 https://blog.dust.tt/tag/customer-stories/ like Datadog, 1Password, Cursor, Clay, Vanta and Persona, and aim to x5 our growth by the end of 2026. Dust is backed by Sequoia https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/27/dust-grabs-another-16-million-for-its-enterprise-ai-assistants-connected-to-internal-data/ 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 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dust-tt_were-honored-to-be-recognized-on-the-generalists-activity-7359284343929741313-Rq04. THIS ROLE 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. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES PARTNER ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT - 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 CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION - Work hand-in