Senior Manager, Strategic Partnerships

The role

You will serve as the day-to-day operating lead for a multi-year, state-funded initiative involving community colleges, workforce nonprofits, and economic development organizations. You will manage a portfolio of partners, oversee public grants and contracts, and translate external commitments into internal project plans.

What you will do

• Serve as the day-to-day owner of a portfolio of workforce, higher education, employer, and economic development partners
• Run the partnership operating rhythm including recurring check-ins and all-partner convenings
• Shepherd agreements from term sheet to execution
• Negotiate deliverables, timelines, and shared definitions
• Onboard new partners and build templates, briefing materials, and playbooks
• Manage public grants and contracts from post-award through closeout
• Own reporting, compliance, documentation, and audit readiness
• Serve as the primary operational point of contact for government partners
• Partner with Finance on budgets, invoicing, and partner payments
• Translate external commitments into internal project plans

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of experience across some partnerships, grants or contract management, policy, and program operations
• Direct experience managing government funding including reporting and compliance obligations
• Demonstrated project management ability in environments with multiple external organizations and no direct authority over them
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Comfort operating across teams and managing multiple priorities against hard external deadlines
• A detail-oriented executor who can also think systemically
• Genuine interest in AI, workforce development, and economic mobility

Nice to have

• Experience with workforce and higher education institutions
• Familiarity with subrecipient monitoring, cost reimbursement contracts, or multi-party subgrant structures
• Experience standing something new up — a program, a partnership, a market — rather than only maintaining it
• Hands-on fluency with AI tools in your own workflow

Benefits

• Competitive compensation in base, plus bonus
• Full benefits package
• 401k match
• Unlimited PTO
• All-Pursuit summer break the last week of August
• A week-long holiday the last week of December
• Monday and Friday work-from-anywhere policy
• Catered lunches once a week and delicious snacks
• Dedicated time to build in AI and hone your AI skills

About the company

Pursuit is a social impact organization building the future of economic mobility in the age of AI. They transform lives through immersive training programs that propel adults from low-income backgrounds into high-growth tech careers.