Senior Manager, Innovation Partnerships—Defense, Cybersecurity and Dual Use Technologies (Cybersecurity)

Location: hirify.global Vancouver Campus, Vancouver, BC, Canada; full-time onsite position.

Compensation: $10,459.67–$15,675.58 CAD monthly.

Company

hirify.global is a research-intensive university advancing research, innovation, learning, and external partnerships across faculties, research centres, and campuses.

What you will do

• Identify, qualify, and advance strategic partnership opportunities in defense, cybersecurity, dual-use technologies, and other research and innovation areas.
• Build and manage relationships with industry, government, not-for-profit organizations, foundations, researchers, funders, and other external partners.
• Design and advance multi-party, multi-year partnerships, research consortia, anchor partnerships, public-private initiatives, innovation hubs, challenge-based collaborations, and strategic alliances.
• Translate partner needs into researchable problems and hirify.global capabilities into clear value propositions, coordinating interdisciplinary researchers and internal stakeholders.
• Develop opportunity briefs, proposals, concept notes, term sheets, memoranda of understanding, governance models, funding structures, and partner-facing materials.
• Track partnership pipelines, risks, funding outcomes, engagement metrics, renewals, and lessons learned while escalating high-risk or complex matters appropriately.

Requirements

• Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline.
• At least nine years of related experience in a senior management position, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own.
• Commitment to developing awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Nice to have

• Graduate degree in science, engineering, health, business, law, public policy, or another relevant field, or an equivalent professional designation.
• Experience creating or materially advancing complex, high-value, multi-party public-private partnerships, research consortia, strategic alliances, or innovation initiatives.
• Experience with a research-intensive university, research institute, technology company, government agency, industry consortium, or innovation organization.
• Knowledge of sponsored research, research contracting, intellectual property, licensing, commercialization, entrepreneurship, public-private funding models, and distinctions among research, philanthropy, sponsorship, procurement, and service activity.
• Experience with Canadian and international innovation funding programs and aligning opportunities with partner and researcher interests.
• Business development, negotiation, account management, proposal development, financial modelling, budgeting, and project management skills.
• Ability to engage credibly with senior executives, government officials, funders, faculty members, research leaders, entrepreneurs, legal and contracting professionals, and administrative stakeholders.
• Ability to synthesize complex scientific, technical, commercial, policy, and institutional information into clear written and oral communications.
• Experience building interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral teams and facilitating work among stakeholders with different goals, cultures, timeframes, and decision processes.
• Exceptional judgement, discretion, diplomacy, resilience, and ability to work in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
• Experience using CRM, pipeline management, reporting, or other tools to track business development activity and partnership outcomes.
• Knowledge of defense, cybersecurity, and dual-use technology research and innovation ecosystems, or other hirify.global priority research and innovation areas.

Culture & Benefits

• Work within a university-wide innovation partnerships function with connections across faculties, departments, research centres, campuses, and institutional offices.
• Collaborate with Sponsored Research, Technology Transfer, Entrepreneurship, Government Relations, Development and Alumni Engagement, legal, finance, and administrative teams.
• Operate with a high degree of independence under the general direction of the Associate Director, with functional leadership of project resources when assigned.
• Support research, innovation, economic, environmental, health, and societal impact through externally funded collaborations.
• The position is subject to satisfactory completion of required background checks.