Senior Partnerships Manager (Fixed-Term)

Fixed-Term Contract (12 months)

Salary: Starting from £50,000 per annum (based on experience)

Full time; 40 hours per week (Part-time negotiable)

Based in: Covent Garden

Prior to commencing your application, please review our application guide here.

The Royal Ballet and Opera continues to lead the way in opera, ballet, music and dance both live on stage and through multiple digital platforms, from live streaming to worldwide cinema screenings. Our Covent Garden theatre has been at the heart of London and British cultural life for three centuries. We are home to two world-class Companies: The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera.

The Royal Opera House describes the place we work, not who we are. The whole is always more than the sum of its parts – we may be a House, but three quarters of our audiences experience what we do outside this building. While our Covent Garden theatre is the nerve centre, the impact and influence of the organisation can be felt in every corner of the country, and around the world.

Thanks to the role played by our Audiences & Commercial (A&C) division we continue to push boundaries and explore new ways to tell our stories, helping encourage people to attend live performances, watch screenings at the cinema or performances streamed online, or simply come in to enjoy the shop, bars, and restaurants in our iconic Covent Garden building.

A critical strand of our Audiences and Commercial division is Brand Partnerships who contribute to our delivery of £80M annual income through commercial activities. With the support of a refreshed brand and purpose, and assets never before available, the Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO) is open for business and on track to deliver a step-change in income from brand partnerships with a £5M target for the FY26/27 season.

We are looking for a seasoned, rigorous senior partnerships specialist with a strong sales mindset and creative ambition who thrives on building high-value, long-term partnerships that deliver measurable commercial return and cultural impact. The role will contribute to the development and implementation of RBO’s partnerships strategy, playing a key role in securing and managing significant partnerships that diversify and strengthen the brand, build income and celebrate RBO’s strategic priorities. This role will lead sales in the Tech, FMCG and Travel business sectors.

An ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate:

• Experience in both new business development and client management, including delivering and negotiating complex 6- and 7-figure partnerships.
• Proven experience managing partnerships with major organisations and overseeing the full lifecycle from prospecting to stewardship.
• Good understanding of a breadth of partner benefits and activations with the ability to incorporate audience metrics into proposals.
• Experience working with, and selling into, Technology business sectors.
• Natural salesperson, confident, persuasive and proactive. Keen understanding of how best to leverage a client’s objectives and maximize potential.
• Excellent relationship-building, verbal communication and negotiation skills with senior stakeholders.

The Royal Ballet and Opera is one of the UK’s leading arts organisations and our aim is to inspire imagination, ignite emotion and make the extraordinary for everyone. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion underpin all that we do. We want our people to be representative of the diversity in the UK. We understand the creativity and innovation that diversity can bring and strive to create an inclusive environment in which everyone can thrive.

We encourage applications from people with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences and skills to join our teams. We particularly welcome applications from those who are from a global majority background and/or those who are disabled, as they are under-represented within our organisation.

We are a Disability Confident Employer, which means that we are actively working to ensure that candidates with disabilities and long-term health conditions feel supported, engaged and able to fulfil their potential in the workplace. We will endeavour to offer an interview to candidates who tell us they wish to participate in the scheme and who demonstrate in their application that they meet the essential criteria for the role, though sometimes due to the volume of qualified candidates with declarations this is not possible.

The RBO is also committed to safeguarding and protecting all children, young people, and adults and we implement robust safer recruitment practices. Due to our safeguarding promise, certain roles will be subject to a DBS check before commencing employment with us, which will be indicated in the advertising.

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For more information about working with the Royal Ballet and Opera, please review the info pack here.

For a list of potential reasonable adjustments, please review this guidance document. If you have any access requirements for your application, please contact the RBO Recruitment Team on hr.recruitment@roh.org.uk

If you are applying as an internal candidate, you might find this guidance document helpful.

Closing date for applications: 11:59pm, 21st June 2026

To ensure a fair process, late applications will not be considered under any circumstances.

Applicants must have work authorisation for the UK. No agencies.