Head of Strategic Partnerships

There are very few moments in a career when you can genuinely say you got there early. This is one of them. Natural capital is emerging as one of the world’s most significant new asset classes and the commercial market for it is being built in real time. Oxygen Conservation is at the forefront of that. 

We are a fast-scaling business on a mission to protect and restore the natural environment at an institutional scale. We are aiming to achieve £1 billion assets under management by 2030, and we will do so by bringing real commercial discipline to conservation. To date we have developed the highest-quality nature-based carbon credits in the world, achieving record prices, and this is just the beginning. We are now looking to bring our portfolio of 2 million premium-quality natural capital credits to market, and this role has been created specifically to lead that work. 

We are looking for someone who wants to help define the premium natural capital market globally, and to become a leading figure in how nature is commercialised. And in doing so deliver both genuine environmental and social impact, alongside financial returns.  

About You 

You are someone who has spent your career presenting premium products and partnership opportunities to discerning buyers. You move comfortably across boardrooms, investment committees and high-trust commercial environments and you understand instinctively that the best commercial outcomes come from genuine relationships, sharp judgement, and the discipline to walk away from the wrong deal. You care passionately about quality, you have an unrelenting commitment to delivery, and you love building relationships with people. You will be selling things that have rarely been sold before — helping create the market as you go. 

Mindset 

• Mission-driven, not commission-driven: you care about the outcome, not just the deal. The developing natural capital market ruthlessly tests anyone who doesn’t. You are radically transparent with partners (and with us) when something doesn’t add up, and you walk away when the shape of a deal would compromise quality or integrity. You join us because you want to make a market, not hit a target.  

• Pace and patience: OC moves quickly, especially when our market doesn’t. You bring the urgency to operate at our speed, and the resilience for the long term- because deals in this developing market do not close in a quarter, and the work between “yes in principle” and signed contract is where most people fall away. 

• A builder, comfortable in ambiguity: When there is no playbook, no comparable benchmark and no obvious next move, you are the person who keeps moving forward. You treat the zero-to-one nature of this role as the appeal, not the risk - and you treat collaboration as the way you build, not friction along the way. The team’s success matters more than your personal pipeline – we have a very rigid “No Dickheads” policy 

• A learner by instinct: You do not need to come from natural capital, but you will need to become genuinely bilingual in the rapidly evolving carbon and biodiversity credit markets - and just as comfortable with the technology that underpins how we make decisions and the products you take to market. Over time, you will become the leading commercial figure in the domain. 

Craft 

• Deal-making as a creative discipline: When a partner says “this doesn’t work for us,” you have already prepared alternative shapes - different tenor, volume, commitment - and can walk through them confidently. 

• A translator and a storyteller: You move between conservation science, investor narrative and corporate procurement language without losing fluency in any of them — and you understand that premium propositions are won on story as much as substance, crafting narratives that partners want to be part of. 

• Unreasonable Hospitality: Your mindset is to solve with generosity, and you think about relationships the way Will Guidara writes about them in Unreasonable Hospitality — going beyond competent service to make people feel genuinely seen, anticipating what partners need before they ask, and treating every relationship (not just the biggest) with the same genuine care. 

Skillset 

• A premium partnerships background: You will likely have built your career in luxury, high-end services or sophisticated B2B environments — partnering with FTSE 100, S&P 500, hyperscalers, infrastructure operators or comparable institutions, where commitment is earned on scarcity, provenance and trust. You understand how procurement and investment committees actually make decisions inside them. 

• Financial literacy to model your own deals: You can appraise how a credit sale affects an investment return, how pricing decisions ripple through a business model, and articulate both to a board. 

• Technology as leverage: You understand that the right systems, AI tools and data platforms multiply a commercial leader’s impact. You will know how to use our proprietary tech to inform pricing, identify the right partners and stay close to a long pipeline — and how to bring AI into your daily workflow as leverage, not novelty. 

About the Role 

This role exists to bring our premium natural capital portfolio to market — leading the sale of 2 million high-integrity carbon, biodiversity and wider nature credits to corporate partners and private investors, at prices that align with the uniqueness of our offering. 

Your primary focus is securing offtake agreements, premium credit sales and long-term strategic partnerships for OC’s natural capital portfolio. Over time, you will build on this foundation to extend the commercial model across the wider Oxygen platform — our proprietary data and analytics capability, our talent network and our content engine — maximising the commercial opportunities available across the business. 

The routes to market you build matter beyond revenue. By establishing credible, scalable partnerships, you will directly strengthen our investment case — helping demonstrate to capital markets that high-integrity natural capital is not only impactful, but genuinely commercially viable at scale. 

Internally, this role sits at the heart of our business. You will work across our three divisions — Capital, Conservation and Intelligence — bringing together our natural capital, investment, data and analytics, legal, finance and marketing capabilities to create commercial propositions that define the market. You will work directly with our CEO and alongside teams that have spent years building expertise across carbon markets, biodiversity net gain and peatland restoration - they will be your most important resource, and we will invest in your literacy across the landscape. 

Externally, your relationships will span global corporates, hyperscalers, high net worth individuals and other strategic partners who want exposure to high-quality, high-integrity natural capital. This role builds OC’s brand as a premium developer as much as its revenue. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Build the market: Help define how premium natural capital is bought, sold and valued globally.  

• Land landmark partnerships: Secure long-term relationships with corporates, investors and strategic buyers that shape the future of the market.  

• Sell at premium value: Position our credits at the top of the market and defend the pricing that quality deserves.  

• Structure category-defining deals: Create commercial structures where no established template yet exists.  

• Turn relationships into revenue: Build deep, trusted partnerships that compound over years, not quarters.  

• Make the investment case undeniable: Ensure every deal strengthens confidence in natural capital as a scalable institutional asset class.  

• Commercialise the wider Oxygen platform: Unlock new opportunities across our data, analytics and intelligence capabilities over time.  

• Represent Oxygen at the highest level: Build our reputation in boardrooms, investment committees and the conversations that move markets. 

• Use AI as leverage: Bring AI into your daily workflow to move faster, spot opportunities earlier, and operate at a level traditional commercial teams cannot match. 

Key Information 

Location: Remote within the UK, with regular travel to our estates and to partner meetings as required. 

Employment type: Permanent, full-time. 

Compensation: Competitive base salary and benefits reflecting the seniority of the role. This is deliberately not a commission-based position.