Commercial Manager
Sponsorship & Partnerships.
London · Permanent · £62,000 – £74,000 + benefits · Reports to the Head of Partnerships
What you’ll do.
You will own GQC’s commercial partnership pipeline end-to-end: from prospecting and pitching to renewing and account-managing the foundation’s sponsors and prize underwriters. You will work most closely with the Head of Partnerships and the three regional Heads of Edition.
Year-one priorities
- Renew the four existing Founding Sponsor relationships ahead of the 2027 cycle.
- Bring in two new Edition Host candidates for the European edition.
- Build a commercial CRM and a clean partner-tier deck the team is happy to send out.
- Sit on the partner-vetting committee and protect the rubric from inappropriate sponsor influence.
Who you might be
- Five-plus years in commercial partnerships, sponsorship sales or business development in education, culture or media.
- Comfortable closing six-figure deals in writing without theatre.
- Sharp, honest, allergic to overselling. Happy to say no to the wrong partner.
- Right to work in the United Kingdom; willing to travel to Hong Kong and New York twice a year.
How to apply.
Email careers@gqc.org with a one-page covering note (no longer) and a CV. Tell us about one partnership you closed that you’re proud of and one you walked away from. We will reply to every application.
The process is three rounds: a written exercise (capped at two hours), an interview with the Head of Partnerships, and a final panel with two members of the academic council. We pay candidates for the written exercise.
Closing date: 30 May 2026. We may close earlier if the right candidate comes forward.
Partners, prizes, city hosts — not a sales quota on students.
The Commercial Manager looks after partner contracts, prize funding and host-university relationships across the three cities. Success is measured by bursaries placed, rooms confirmed, and conflicts kept off the jury, not by the number of teams who apply. The person in post works with the programme producers and does not sit on juries.
Applicants for the role should be able to read a contract, host a breakfast without turning it into a pitch-a-thon, and say no to anyone who wants to buy a judging seat. Send work@gqc.org a note, not a 40-page deck.