Partnerships & Biz Dev Manager

We’re looking for a Partnerships Manager to build and scale Realm’s partnership function as a core growth engine for the company.

This role is for a full-stack business development and operations leader - someone who can identify high-potential partner channels, structure deals, launch pilots, build the operating model, and turn early wins into repeatable acquisition systems. You will own the entire partnership lifecycle from strategy and sourcing through implementation, performance management, and scale.

This is not a relationship-only partnership role. We are looking for someone who can both close the deal and make the deal work. You should be equally comfortable pitching executives, designing workflows, analyzing funnel performance, managing cross-functional implementation, working directly with customers and getting into the details when a partner operation needs to be fixed.

Realm sits in a massive, fragmented category where trust, timing, and distribution matter deeply. The right partnerships can materially accelerate how homeowners discover Realm, how we acquire high-intent customers, and how we expand into new renovation-related channels.

This is a full-time, office-based role.

The Job to Be Done

Your mandate is to build partnerships into a scalable, repeatable acquisition and revenue channel for Realm.

This includes:

• Identifying the highest-leverage partner categories and prioritizing where Realm should invest
• Sourcing, pitching, negotiating, and closing strategic partnerships
• Designing the operating model required to make each partnership successful
• Making one-off partner wins repeatable
• Creating clear measurement systems for partner-sourced leads, conversion, revenue, and unit economics
• Partnering cross-functionally with Sales, Advisory, Operations, Product, Data, and Marketing to make partnerships scale

About Realm

Realm is on a mission to help homeowners complete renovations and new builds with confidence, ease, and financial clarity. We guide homeowners through the most complex parts of pre-construction - scope, pricing, timelines, permitting, and financing, then match them with high-quality contractors and support them through execution.

Founded in 2019, Realm is building a category-defining platform that blends real-world expertise with AI-powered tooling to transform a historically opaque and fragmented industry. Our small but mighty team is based primarily in Los Angeles / Marina del Rey.

What You’ll Do

Build the Partnerships Strategy

• Define Realm’s partnership strategy across high-potential categories such as real estate, finance, insurance, home services, local institutions, employers, member networks, and other homeowner-adjacent channels.
• Prioritize partner segments based on customer intent, lead quality, implementation complexity, revenue potential, and strategic fit.
• Develop clear hypotheses, test plans, and success metrics for each partner category.
• Determine which partnership motions should be lightweight referral channels, deep strategic integrations, co-marketing motions, or new vertical opportunities.

Own Full-Cycle Business Development

• Source and close high-quality partners that can drive meaningful homeowner demand.
• Build compelling partner pitches, collateral, business cases, and deal structures.
• Negotiate commercial terms, referral structures, operating expectations, and launch plans.
• Develop relationships with executive sponsors while also building strong working relationships with the operators who make partnerships succeed day to day.

Turn Deals into Scalable Operating Systems

• Own partner implementation from signed agreement through launch and ongoing performance.
• Design the workflows, SLAs, CRM processes, reporting, enablement, and feedback loops needed to make each partnership function.
• Partner with internal teams to ensure partner-sourced customers receive a strong Realm experience.
• Identify bottlenecks quickly and fix them across process, incentives, training, tooling, or partner expectations.
• Avoid bespoke, manual, one-off workflows wherever possible - you will be creating systems that scale.

Drive Performance and Accountability

• Own partner-sourced pipeline, conversion, revenue, CAC, payback, and partner-level ROI.
• Build reporting that makes performance visible and actionable.
• Run regular partner business reviews and make clear recommendations on whether to scale, adjust, or shut down a partnership.
• Continuously improve partner quality, lead routing, activation, conversion, and retention.
• Create playbooks that allow the team to repeat what works without reinventing the wheel.

Be the Connector Between External Partners and Internal Teams

• Translate partner needs into internal requirements across Sales, Advisory, Operations, Marketing, Product, and Data.
• Bring market feedback back into Realm’s product, positioning, and GTM strategy.
• Identify where partner demand exposes new product opportunities, new verticals, or operational gaps.
• Help Realm build a partnership function that becomes a durable advantage, not a collection of ad hoc relationships.

What You’ll Need

• 5-7+ years of experience in business development, partnerships, strategic partnerships, marketplace growth, revenue operations, consulting, or startup operations.
• Proven experience sourcing, structuring, launching, and scaling partnerships that drove measurable business outcomes.
• Strong understanding of full-stack partnership acquisition and operations
• Experience building a partner channel from early stage into a repeatable growth motion.
• Strong commercial judgment and comfort negotiating terms, incentives, and operating expectations.
• Excellent systems thinking - you naturally connect strategy, partner needs, internal workflows, data, incentives, and customer experience.
• Fluency with funnel metrics, unit economics, pipeline management, and revenue reporting.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• High ownership, urgency, and follow-through.
• Willingness to be hands-on. You should be excited to build the first version yourself before scaling the function.
• Based in or willing to be in-market regularly.
• Willingness to travel and be in-person / on the ground 5 days a week

Nice to Have

• Experience in marketplaces, real estate, construction, home services, fintech, proptech, insurance, lending, or other complex consumer categories.
• Experience working with referral-based, channel-based, or local-market partnership models.
• Experience building partner operations in Salesforce, HubSpot, Looker, Retool, or similar CRM / analytics / workflow tools.
• Experience using AI and automation to improve partner workflows, lead qualification, reporting, or operational efficiency.
• Experience at a high-growth startup where partnerships had to be built from scratch.

Why Join Us?

• Build a company-defining growth channel in a massive, underserved category.
• Own the full partnership motion from strategy through execution and scale.
• Work directly with Realm’s leadership team on one of the company’s most important growth bets.
• Join a profitable, growing business in a true whitespace category with no comparable end-to-end incumbent.
• Shape how homeowners navigate one of the largest, most stressful, and most financially important decisions of their lives.
• Competitive compensation and meaningful equity.
• A high-bar, execution-driven team that values ownership, clarity, and measurable outcomes.