Senior Manager, Innovation Partnerships in Vancouver

The Senior Manager, Innovation Partnerships—Defense, Cybersecurity and Dual Use Technologies is a senior business development and partnership architecture role within Innovation UBC. The role focuses on defense, cybersecurity and dual use technologies, and advances partnerships in other industries by drawing on research strengths across the University. Reporting to the Associate Director, Innovation Partnerships, with dotted line reporting to the Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, Faculty of Applied Science, the incumbent initiates, develops, structures, negotiates within delegated authority, and advances high-value partnerships with industry, government, not-for-profit organizations, foundations, and other external partners.

The role is accountable for generating and advancing opportunities that convert UBC research strengths, innovation assets, talent, intellectual property, and facilities into strategically significant, externally funded collaborations that deliver measurable research, innovation, economic, environmental, health, and societal impact. This position is focused on complex and multi-faceted public-private partnership opportunities, including multi-party research consortia, anchor partner relationships, challenge-based initiatives, and major strategic alliances.

The Senior Manager applies scientific and/or technical fluency, business acumen, senior relationship management, opportunity qualification, and knowledge of sponsored research, technology transfer, commercialization, entrepreneurship, and public/private innovation funding models to create collaborations that are larger in scope, longer in duration, and more strategically important than incremental project-by-project research contracts. The Senior Manager is expected to independently generate opportunities for review, lead assigned initiatives, and drive them to completion with regular progress check-ins and direction from the Associate Director.

Organizational Status: Internal. Reports directly to the Associate Director, Innovation Partnerships, and has a dotted line reporting relationship to the Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, Faculty of Applied Science. Works with the Associate Dean to align relevant partnership opportunities with the Faculty’s research priorities and connect with its researchers, while maintaining a university wide partnership mandate across faculties, departments, research centres and campuses.

Works closely with Innovation UBC Sponsored Research, Technology Transfer, Entrepreneurship, and other Innovation UBC colleagues to ensure external partners receive coordinated and coherent outreach and responses. Engages with UBC faculty, research clusters, research centres, institutes, Deans, Associate Deans Research, VPRI Office colleagues, Development and Alumni Engagement, Government Relations, legal and contracting resources, finance and administrative units, and other UBC staff in partnership-facing roles.

May provide project direction and coordination to project managers, contractors, or other resources assigned to specific partnership initiatives. The role does not have overall responsibility for managing the Innovation Partnerships team.

Key Responsibilities:

• Contributes to the development and execution of Innovation UBC's partnerships strategy, annual work plan, and strategic opportunity pipeline.
• Independently identifies and generates new partnership opportunities for review, prioritization, and direction by the Associate Director.
• Identifies areas where UBC research strengths, facilities, intellectual property, entrepreneurial capacity, and student talent can be combined into compelling value propositions for external partners.
• Undertakes proactive external market discovery and environmental scanning to identify major industry needs, government priorities, funding opportunities, consortia models, and public/private innovation programs beyond recurring transactional mechanisms.
• Develops opportunity briefs, partner value propositions, prospect strategies, and internal decision materials for high-potential strategic initiatives.
• Assesses and prioritizes opportunities based on strategic alignment, partner readiness, potential funding scale, UBC research fit, complexity, risk, reputational value, likelihood of execution, and long-term impact.
• Provides recommendations to the Associate Director on opportunity prioritization, partner engagement strategies, risk considerations, and next steps.
• Maintains awareness of national and international innovation trends, major funding programs, sector roadmaps, policy priorities, and emerging research partnership models relevant to UBC.

Minimum Qualifications:

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

Preferred Qualifications:

• Graduate degree in science, engineering, health, business, law, public policy, or another relevant field, or an equivalent professional designation.
• Proven track record creating or materially advancing complex, high-value, multi-party public-private partnerships, research consortia, strategic alliances, or innovation initiatives.
• Experience working in or with a research-intensive university, research institute, technology company, government agency, industry consortium, or innovation organization.
• Working knowledge of sponsored research, research contracting, intellectual property, licensing, commercialization, entrepreneurship, public/private funding models, and the differences between research, philanthropy, sponsorship, procurement, and service activity.
• Experience with Canadian and international innovation funding programs, including the ability to identify, interpret, and align opportunities with partner and researcher interests.
• Strong 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 and persuasive written and oral communications.
• Demonstrated success 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 technologies research and innovation ecosystems is an asset.