Strategic Partnerships Lead

As the newest member of our Corporate Business Development & Partnerships team, you will play a critical role in launching and scaling new business lines, products, and partnerships at Mill. You’ll bring a proven track record of building “first-of-their-kind” partnerships, scaling corporate partnerships and helping to commercialize innovative technologies. This is a highly strategic and externally facing role that requires exceptional judgment, creativity, and the ability to navigate ambiguity. You’ll work across industries—real estate, waste, sustainability, and beyond—to identify new revenue-generating opportunities and bring them to life.

You’ll join a top-tier team of professionals from Apple, Nest, Google, and other industry leaders, helping to shape the growth trajectory of a climate-forward company with strong mission alignment.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Partnerships: Identify, develop, and close innovative business and channel partnerships that unlock new lines of revenue and accelerate adoption of Mill’s food waste solution.
• Opportunity Origination: Build a robust pipeline of high-impact opportunities through research, networking, prospecting, and creative outbound initiatives.
• Deal Structuring & Execution: Drive complex negotiations and structure deals from concept to contract with a focus on long-term value creation.
• Partner Success: Create the partner success playbook for our highly strategic and curated partners to ensure deals from origination to launch are a success
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Partner closely with product, legal, policy, and operations teams to deliver creative solutions for prospective partners and customers.
• External Advocacy: Represent Mill at industry events and in strategic conversations with potential partners, regulators, or collaborators.
• Feedback Loop: Surface market feedback to inform product development, pricing models, and future roadmap priorities.

Who You Are

• Experienced Operator: 5+ years in business development, strategic partnerships, or corporate development with a focus on launching new initiatives or entering new markets.
• Entrepreneurial Closer: You’ve built and closed complex partnerships or deals from the ground up—ideally for products or services in sustainability, climate tech, or B2B environments.
• Strategic Thinker: You’re deeply analytical, detail oriented, a creative problem solver, and comfortable navigating ambiguous, unstructured environments with sound judgment. 
• Connector: You have a strong network and a proven ability to open doors, build relationships, and influence senior stakeholders across industries like real estate, sustainability, waste, and operations.
• Collaborative Teammate: You thrive working cross-functionally in fast-moving teams, and you’re a clear communicator who can bring others along.
• Mission-Aligned: Passion for climate, sustainability, and waste reduction is core to your worldview and work.

Why You’ll Love It Here

• Opportunity to build market-defining products that solve one of the planet’s biggest environmental challenges.
• Work with a best-in-class, mission-driven team.
• High degree of ownership and scope for innovation.
• Competitive compensation and benefits.

This role is based out of our San Bruno location and in-office 3 days/week. 

The annual US salary range for this role is $135k - $185k. For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role,which also does not include the value of benefits or a potential equity grant. A wide range of factors are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to skill sets, market conditions, experience and training, licensure and certifications, and business and organizational needs.