In our Jobs of the Week column today, we’re showcasing openings for a Head of Design, Venture Studio, at Highline Beta in Toronto and a Manager of Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement at Canada’s Ocean Supercluster.

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is an Atlantic Canada-based organization with national scope that supports sustainable economic growth in Canada’s ocean-based industries while preserving the health and protection of the seas.

Highline Beta is an organization that aims to build better ventures by unlocking the assets within large companies. It aspires to help them grow beyond their core through internal and external innovation.

The Job of the Week column features openings posted on the Entrevestor Job Board, which focuses on jobs in technology, innovation and startups in Atlantic Canada. The Entrevestor Job Board helps match job openings and candidates in the tech and startup communities and is operated by Entrevestor and Alongside.

The following are excerpts from this week’s postings:

Toronto

Highline Beta

Head of Design, Venture Studio

Marcus Daniels, Lauren Robinson and I (Ben Yoskovitz) founded Highline Beta with the mission of building better ventures. Our thesis is this: by unlocking the assets within large companies, we can help them grow beyond their core through internal and external innovation.

We're blending an innovation consulting business with a venture studio and venture capital business, giving us the ability to build new businesses in a number of ways. We're building a team of exceptional people that are excited by the prospect of working at a company that's doing something different and delivering incredible value.

We love building businesses. We love the mission of finding meaningful problems to solve, and then solving them with the right solutions. We love helping others achieve their goals, whether it's an innovation leader inside a large company or a founder that's scaling her startup. Everything is a puzzle that needs to be figured out, and we spend our time at Highline Beta putting the puzzles together.

Our Venture Studio is focused on building new startups - quickly validating new opportunities and launching them alongside top-notch, fundable founders. These startups have access to our corporate partners as well as our venture capital fund. Together, we co-create new startups that have unfair advantages in the market. For example, we recently co-created Relay in collaboration with American Family Insurance to transform how reinsurance deals are made.

As the Head of Design, you will report to the Founding Partner & CPO, Ben Yoskovitz, and be responsible for helping founders of seed-stage startups build and grow their business. You will join as an experienced designer with a proven ability to grow early-stage B2C and B2B startups from first users through to project-market fit. You will join the Venture Studio team and work alongside senior leaders from product managers like Chris Chae, engineers like Gary Fung, and collaborate with Senior leadership like Founding Partner & CEO, Marcus Daniels. If you are passionate about building businesses that solve meaningful problems and drive real impact, balancing both user needs and business outcomes, this role is for you.

Responsibilities

Generate, validate and evaluate startup opportunities

Support founders in building, launching and growing their startups from idea to seed stage

Design and execute experiments to validate key assumptions around desirability, viability, and feasibility of business ideas

Conduct customer and market research, product discovery, prototyping, demand testing, and business model development

Use design thinking and hypothesis-driven frameworks to make insight-driven design decisions

Form an opinion on a potential founder's mission and idea, capabilities, and business model

Advise and provide guidance to founders on design vision and strategy

Product design, brand development, and creation of MVP through public launch and seed investment

Support recruitment of talented and conducting due diligence on entrepreneurs looking for their next adventure

Write Studio investment memos and present opportunities to Partners . . .

Click here to read the full job posting.

Atlantic Canada

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster

Manager of Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement

Reporting to the Chief Engagement Officer (CNO), the Manager of Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement is responsible for developing strong cluster network growth and connectivity, ensuring sector partnerships are actively maintained and providing leadership and oversight to strategic cluster growth activities.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

There are three key areas the successful candidate will be accountable for:

Engage Members and Key Stakeholders

· Work collaboratively with internal OSC teams and members to understand key priorities of ocean sectors

· Oversee the strategic direction of targeted cluster forums, workshops that facilitate conversations amongst members on key topics

· Manage and report on engagement tracking

· Responsible for action items and strategic reports (where appropriate) connected to key engagement activities.

Funding and Partnership Opportunities

· Manage sponsorships, donations and other value adds to support sector initiatives

· Identify and pursue new funding sources for key programming and initiatives that build on existing supercluster momentum, including preparing applications, collaborative agreements and engagement of new strategic partners.

· Identify and lead partnerships with the private sector to support cluster building projects.

Broader Network

· Spearhead events from sourcing topics and speakers through to successful execution

· Engage in activities with international clusters and national associations, including the development and execution of Supercluster MOUs and collaborative agreements.

· Represent the OSC on key working groups and committees

This is a contract salaried position with option to extend.

Experience & Qualifications

· Relevant undergraduate degree, certificate or related business experience

· 5 – 7 years in a business development role managing a client portfolio

· Bilingual (French and English) considered an asset

· Hands-on, strong competency with client relationship management tools (CRM), reporting and analysis

· Experience within the blue economy or ocean industry

· Established and progressive experience with membership-based business models and fostering complex partnerships

· Governmental affairs experience considered an asset

· Proven experience in sourcing and responding to funding applications and business proposals (private and public sector)

· Previous experience/exposure to a start-up environment

Click here to read the full job posting.