Partnerships Specialist

About the role

The Partnerships Manager drives a team to commercial innovation through strategic partnerships, ensures the seamless delivery of partnership commitments, defines go-to-market approaches, and positions BT Group as a key global partner.
In addition to commercial and strategic responsibilities, a core component of this role is to champion and deliver service excellence and continuous improvement across all partner engagements. This includes identifying areas of underperformance, leading service improvement initiatives, and aligning service delivery with BT’s digital transformation goals.
The Partnerships Manager builds relational contracts that enable productivity, growth, and long-term value while ensuring partner-delivered services are fit-for-purpose, high-quality, and continuously improving to meet the needs of BT’s customers and colleagues.

What you’ll be doing

1. Supports strategy development and growth of partnerships for BT Group, with proactive monitoring of vendor performance and implementation of service improvement plans. Commercial management of vendor portfolio through multiple lenses (operational, regulatory, legal, reputational, IT security risk, etc.)
2. Works with partners to hold them accountable to performance standards, challenging underperformance and driving continuous improvement to maximize the balance of value and service quality while managing develops opportunities
3. Builds long-term sustainable opportunities to enhance customer value and service experience across partnerships.
4. Operates as a subject matter expert within partnership management, leading a portfolio of partners to ensure long-term sustainable opportunities to enhance customer value and service experience for cost-effective and optimal service outcomes
5. Collaborates with internal stakeholders to ensure services provided by partners are measured and improved based on contractual and service-level agreements (SLAs)
6. Leads the implementation of service and process improvement initiatives to enhance the quality and effectiveness of partnership management
7. Ensures key partners align with group strategies, working with critical stakeholders across regions to deliver commercial and service objectives
8. Identifies and builds new relationships with strategic partners, agreeing on areas of mutual value, including opportunities to jointly improve service delivery and innovation
9. Acts as the primary liaison for partners, proactively resolving issues and championing a culture of continuous service improvement
10. Oversees contract lifecycle management, including amendments and service-related change controls, ensuring all modifications support performance and service improvements.

Essential Skills / Experience

1. Strong commercial awareness and understanding of contractual compliance, including service-level agreements (SLAs) and improvement clauses.
2. Experience in service management and improvement, with the ability to identify inefficiencies and lead transformation efforts in collaboration with partners.
3. Proven stakeholder management skills: able to influence cross-functional teams and facilitate outcome-driven discussions that enhance service and value.
4. Demonstrated ability to navigate complex environments, driving collaboration across multiple Customer-Facing Units (CFUs).
5. Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive service quality conversations with external partners.
6. A data-first mindset, capable of creating ecosystems for performance and service monitoring, supporting data-driven improvement across all partner services.

Desirable Skills / Experience

1. Risk and compliance governance, with the ability to identify, assess, and mitigate operational, financial, and security risks across subcon partners while ensuring adherence to regulatory and internal frameworks.
2. Financial acumen and cost optimisation, with a strong understanding of cost drivers, billing models, and commercial levers to support budget control and drive value from partner engagements.
3. Experience in performance management and KPI framework design, with the ability to establish scorecards, governance cadence, and escalation paths aligned to business outcomes.
4. Proven change management capability, able to lead behavioural and operational change across partners and internal teams to ensure successful adoption of new processes, tools, and contractual obligations.