Head of Partnerships

Instawork Services India Private Limited; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Instawork is seeking a Head of Partnerships for its India business to build and lead a partnerships engine across hospitality, logistics, manufacturing, warehousing, and retail. You will establish goals, design scalable processes, and partner with leadership to drive outbound pipeline and strategic alliances.

You bring 10+ years in partnerships, a proven track record of large B2B deals, and an entrepreneurial mindset.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in partnerships or business development.
• Proven ability to close large B2B partnerships.
• Experience building a partnerships function from scratch.

Responsibilities

• Build the Partnerships Engine for India.
• Own partnerships strategy across hospitality, logistics, manufacturing, warehousing, retail, and other labor-intensive industries.
• Lead the partnerships team, processes, systems, and operating cadence.
• Develop repeatable playbooks for partner identification, outreach, qualification, negotiation, and conversion.

Skills

Partnerships leadership

Negotiation

Relationship management

Strategic thinking

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in relevant field

Job description

Head of Partnerships - Instawork Robotics Labs

Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we’re looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works.

The Mission

Instawork is building the data engine for the future of Physical AI. We are looking for a Head of Partnerships to build and lead our India business partners. You will be responsible for identifying, developing, and onboarding thousands of small, medium and large businesses across India to help build the pipeline for Robotics data collection. The opportunity is to connect Instawork’s technology, labor marketplace, and operational scale with the world’s leading robotics companies and turn real-world work into the high-quality data required to train and improve the next generation of physical AI. This is a highly entrepreneurial role for a senior partnerships leader who wants to build something from the ground up and work directly with company leadership.

What You’ll Own

• Build the Partnerships Engine for Small, Medium and Large businesses in India
• Own the partnerships strategy across hospitality, logistics, manufacturing, warehousing, retail, and other labor-intensive industries.
• Build and eventually lead the partnerships team, processes, systems, and operating cadence.
• Establish clear goals and metrics for pipeline generation and business acquisition.
• Execute large business partnerships with industrial, co-operative and government bodies that work with multiple businesses.
• Develop repeatable playbooks for partner identification, outreach, qualification, negotiation, and conversion.
• Work Directly with Leadership
• Partner closely with the CEO and Head of Robotics on the company’s partnership strategy.
• Bring market intelligence, partner feedback, and new opportunities directly to leadership.
• Move quickly from strategy to execution, with a strong bias toward action and measurable outcomes.

Who You Are

• 10+ years of experience in partnerships, business development, strategic alliances, or a similar commercial leadership role.
• Proven track record of managing fleet on street and also building and closing large B2B partnerships.
• Experience building a partnerships or business development function from the ground up is highly preferred.
• Strong network across hospitality, logistics, manufacturing, warehousing, retail, marketplaces, or other labor-intensive industries is a major plus.
• Entrepreneurial mindset—you enjoy building rather than inheriting an established playbook.
• Extremely strong bias for action and ownership.
• You see a problem and figure out how to solve it.
• Comfortable operating with ambiguity, limited structure, and rapidly changing priorities.
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and relationship-building skills.
• Commercially sharp, highly driven, and comfortable being measured by outcomes.

What Success Looks Like

• Build a strong pipeline of businesses across India.
• Close and launch high-impact partnerships with multiple industrial, cooperative or government organizations
• Establish a repeatable partnership acquisition playbook.
• Create a scalable partnerships organization and operating model.
• Help position Instawork as a critical infrastructure partner for companies building the future of Physical AI.

Our Values

• Empathy, Trust & Candor We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback.
• Bias for Action We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct!
• Always Be Learning We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry.
• Act Like an Owner We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.

About Instawork

Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies—and we're just getting started! Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.

Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.