Director of Business Development

Knowledge Futures seeks an experienced and driven Director of Business Development (DBD) to join its Partnerships Team. As the organization's first DBD, you’ll play a vital role in establishing and realizing a robust sales pipeline. Your ability to balance long-term strategy with short-term goals, as well as see and seek out potential opportunities proactively will be critical to helping Knowledge Futures align its infrastructure development with partner and market needs.

Remote, full-time (4-day, 32-hour workweek) | $133,397

The application period for this role will close on Monday, October 21st at 5:00pm ET

About Knowledge Futures and PubPub

Knowledge Futures is a nonprofit infrastructure organization that makes information useful. Originally founded in 2017 as a partnership between the MIT Press and the MIT Media Lab, KF has been a 501(c)(3) since 2020. Its team has spent nearly a decade building PubPub, an open-source publishing platform adopted by knowledge-sharing communities that seek to prioritize openness, accessibility, and dynamism in their publishing activities. In July 2024, KF announced a new version of PubPub, PubPub Platform. PubPub Platform enables the creation of full-stack, semi-custom knowledge applications and affords KF partners a greater level of customizability to unlock new potential and creativity. 

About the Partnerships Team

The Partnerships Team pursues, develops, and manages all of KF’s relationships and agreements with potential and existing clients. This team is the lynchpin that oversees the full project lifecycle from partner acquisition strategy to project development to fully deployed and live knowledge-sharing communities. It is the main point of contact for ongoing projects and new/potential business and is responsible for working with partners to adopt and effectively implement the knowledge applications we build. 

About the Role

• Lead in establishing our partnership sales funnel while playing a big role in informing our go-to-market strategy for PubPub Platform, including identifying new partners and opportunities, building relationships with existing and potential partners, and creating, pricing, and delivering proposals
• Lead in creating the materials needed to effectively communicate about the usefulness of different knowledge applications of PubPub Platforms to target constituencies
• Collaborate with Ops to implement and optimize the partner development process. Work together on the integration and effective use of tools such as Salesforce to improve data and forecast accuracy.
• Source and generate new partners for the organization, including identifying and qualifying leads and identifying and attending relevant conferences and meetings
• Drive team momentum and spearhead conversations that directly inform platform development and marketing
• Contribute to the strategic interpretation of partner needs to ensure new projects and R&D work is focused on making information useful for current and future potential partners 
• Understand the full KF landscape of projects and technical capabilities and use this understanding to make connections, propose goals, and inform organization-level direction

About You

• You have significant experience meeting or exceeding goals in a fundraising, business development, partnerships, or sales role, preferably for an organization in or serving academic publishing, research, or higher education
• You’re familiar with knowledge sharing communities and the scholarly communications industry, and ideally have a strong network of connections who would be receptive to hearing about Knowledge Futures’ work, or have a demonstrated ability and interest in becoming fluent in new communities and industries
• You delight in working with multiple stakeholders to match the organization’s capabilities with a partner’s needs to put together and deliver a great proposal on a deadline
• You enjoy working in a collaborative, team-driven environment to create effective structures and workflows, mentor and help teammates, and generally help the team meets its goals
• You’re persistent and resilient, motivated by meeting challenges and exceeding goals. You can channel urgency into positive momentum and thrive under pressure and timelines
• You enjoy being inventive and taking a creative approach and excel when tasked to define a way forward
• You can balance a refined attention to detail with a high-level strategic outlook
• You have ideas about “usefulness” and how existing systems can be improved or replaced in the name of more effective understanding, creativity, and action
• You’re eager to explore novel techniques and find fulfillment in learning new things to achieve personal and team-wide goals

Eligibility

You must be legally authorized to work in the United States to apply for this role. We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds with diverse skillsets. If you have significant personal experience or engagement with low-income communities, international communities, or fields and languages that are underrepresented in academia, scholarly publishing, or open data, we strongly encourage you to apply. This job description is intended to be a guidepost, not a checklist. If you feel like you could do a great job in this role, even if you donʼt exactly meet every qualification, please consider applying.

• Work 4 days per week with a thoughtfully distributed team. We were a remote team before it was a global necessity, and put a lot of effort into making the remote experience a great one. Learn more about how we work in our Handbook. 
• Enjoy industry-standard perks: a minimum of 5 weeks off per year that we require you to actually use, best-in-class health benefits with generous company contributions, 401k with generous matching, your own computer of choice, a stipend for setting up your home office, and the ability to work 4 days per week, fully remote — with regular in-person team retreats as safety allows — with a team that prioritizes remote participation.
• Contribute to our larger mission at Knowledge Futures to make information useful. As a KF team member, youʼll be able to contribute to building the organization itself and documenting those efforts, as well as engage in larger industry conversations.

Compensation

The salary for this position is $133,397 plus benefits. In late 2022 we implemented a no-negotiation salary system designed to increase fairness and transparency and reduce bias in compensation by paying the same salary in each function/level across the company regardless of location or tenure. We base starting salaries on industry medians in New York City (no matter where you're based), automatically adjust twice per year to account for cost of living so you don't need to demand raises or seek offers elsewhere, and provide clear pathways for promotion with large compensation increases (while not requiring you to seek promotion to stay in good standing and keep up with inflation/industry trends). Read the Compensation Policy chapter of our Handbook for more details.