Business Development Manager

The Cardano Foundation is an independent, Swiss-based not-for-profit organization. The Foundation is tasked with advancing the public digital infrastructure of Cardano and works to anchor it as a utility for financial and social systems, thus empowering the digital architects of the future.

The Foundation facilitates the worldwide advancement of Cardano in enterprise applications. It develops infrastructure tooling—including where there may not be an immediate commercial use case—plus strengthen operational resilience, and drives diversity of on-infrastructure use cases as well as the development of sound and representative governance.

Another significant part of the Cardano Foundation’s mission is to engage with and support the Cardano community. The Foundation assists in the development of tools the community can use to leverage Cardano to solve problems in new ways.

As a Business Development Manager for  Cardano Academy, you will play a crucial role in growth enablement, managing new and existing strategic accounts, establishing key alliances, expanding the reach of our educational initiatives in the industry, and subsequently driving the wider Adoption strategy of the organization in the market.

Your primary responsibility will be the Academy partner lifecycle from identifying and successfully securing high-quality leads from the target audience of Enterprises, Universities, and Government, to delivery and partner relations.

In this role you will report directly to the Director of Cardano Academy and have the following responsibilities:

Strategy and Planning

• Develop and implement a comprehensive business development strategy and roadmap that aligns with the Cardano Foundation's mission and the Cardano Academy's targets, both audience and revenue.

• Assess the current partnership pipeline, and qualify the leads to ensure alignment with the Cardano Academy’s objectives and KPIs.

• Set up reporting and success metrics, and use a CRM to monitor the performance of partnerships in line with the newly created business development strategy, roadmap, and goals. 

• Evaluating market trends, analyzing partner needs, and providing insights to the Academy Director for strategic decision-making.

Lead Generation:

• Leverage your network, the existing Cardano Academy pipeline, and the knowledge from analysis, evaluating market trends and insights to identify and generate high-quality leads and growth opportunities.

• Attend relevant industry events, networking opportunities, and arrange calls and business meetings, corporate trainings and masterclasses with key decision-makers.

• Create proposals and do presentations for key decision-makers.

• Continuously analyze industry trends, market dynamics, and competitor activities, as well as work with Marketing to understand what best drives digital traffic and lead generation. 

Negotiation and Onboarding:

• Negotiate partnership agreements, and terms, working closely with Legal to secure commitments from partners, and ensure that agreement expectations are aligned and mutually beneficial to both parties.

• Work with the Academy Director and Legal as a project support to develop licensing agreements for the Academy content.

• Work closely with the Academy Education Manager to make sure agreement scope, delivery and timelines are feasible. 

• Create an onboarding process for new partners, ensuring a smooth transition and a clear alignment of partnership terms and expectations.

• 5-7 years experience as a business development manager, or relevant role.

• Proven track record in creating and executing partnership success.

• BSc/BA degree in Business Management or a related field.

• Proficient understanding of blockchain technology and market knowledge

• The ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.

• You are open, kind and respectful of others.

• The ideal candidate should have an intrinsic drive, a passion for the adoption of new technologies, and the sophistication needed to engage key decision-makers across various industries to create buy-in. 

Partner Relations

• Establish and maintain strong relationships with partners, acting as the primary point of contact. Monitor partner satisfaction and performance, ensuring that commitments are met and partnerships remain productive and fruitful.

• Collaborate with partners to identify and develop joint educational programs, events, masterclasses and corporate training initiatives. 

• Coordinate efforts with Education Manager and Marketing to ensure successful execution, delivery and promotion of partnerships.

• Identify upsell opportunities within the Cardano Academy partner pipeline and work closely with the Global Enterprise Technology Leads to develop these opportunities further to create prototypes and proof of concepts that have product-market fit.

• Own network to build partner pipeline. 

• Knowledge of Cardano and its Community.

• Have done the Academy’s Cardano Blockchain Certified Associate (CBCA) Course. 

Apply for this job

Cardano Foundation has incredible employees from over 24 nationalities, across 3 continents which you will work collegiately to grow the Foundation. 

Here at Cardano Foundation’s we are transparent, inclusive, passionate and innovative. As such our mission is to have a positive impact on global change and breed a harmonious working environment for our employees to flourish. 

Benefits:

• Our employees have the flexibility and freedom to work from home with flexible working hours. 
• All Cardano Foundation employees will have access to a personal annual learning budget dedicated to personal professional and personal development. 
• A day a year is dedicated to a departmental team activity fun day out. 
• Cardano Foundation gives the opportunity to its employees to dedicate a volunteering day to help the greater community or to be an expert in your field of work within the blockchain community. 
• Employees are given additional day off for their birthday. 
• Cardano Foundation also rewards days off as per established work anniversaries milestones.

Cardano Foundation strives to provide a diverse, inclusive and welcoming working environment. We are committed being a discrimination free organisation - including discrimination free space with regards to age, religion, race, nationality/ethnic origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Applications from Recruitment Agencies
Cardano Foundation does not accept any applications from recruitment agencies for this position. We refuse any responsibility for unsolicited applications as well as any associated fees. Unsolicited applications will be treated as direct application regardless of the channel through which we receive them.  Apply for this job