Growth and Partnerships Director

Job Description

Job Description

Location: New York City, Hybrid, 3 Days in Office

Salary: $150,000 - $200,000 ($300,000 - $400,000 OTE uncapped) + share options

Reporting to: Tori Brillaud, Head of Advocacy Consulting

About us

Duel is a SaaS company on a mission to make Brand Advocacy the industry standard for building brilliant retail brands. It was founded by world record breaking adventurer and former brand ambassador Paul Archer. We exist to show that companies built for advocacy can change the world. In today's hyper connected world, where social media is now twice the size of all other media channels combined and entirely user generated, the most successful brands are the ones investing in people and in community, not in ads.

The Duel Brand Advocacy Solution allows enterprise brands to do just that. We have onboarded over 60 influential brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Charlotte Tilbury, Spanx, Victoria's Secret, LUSH, and Elemis. Duel's team works from hubs in New York City, London, and Bristol. Our team of 60+ is composed of psychologists, brand experts, and community builders, combining cutting edge brand expertise with seasoned SaaS experience.

Backed by top VCs, Duel recently announced a $16 million Series A, which is accelerating our growth in the US from our base in New York and bringing our AI driven product vision to life, giving brands what they need to grow through thousands of advocates, customers, creators, and brand ambassadors.

The Role

This isn’t a sales role in the traditional sense. It’s an advocacy consulting role that drives revenue.

We believe powerful advocacy is built through remarkable brand experiences, not traditional sales motions. The goal is to build trusted, advocacy-led relationships that create meaningful value for our customers and drive long-term commercial success.

That means less “How can I get you to buy?” and more “Tell me what challenges you’re facing, and how can I help?”

You’ll show up as someone who has sat in the seat of the person you’re speaking to. You understand the marketing landscape from experience and can have a credible, peer-level conversation with a CMO or Head of Brand about what’s broken in the way brands build community, and what needs to change.

You lead with insight, empathy, and genuine curiosity, not a sales pitch. The commercial outcome is a result of the value and trust you create, not the starting point.

Your mandate is to educate, challenge, and build relationships around a core belief: advocacy is the standard for how great brands grow.

It’s a challenger approach in spirit, but one driven by curiosity, insight, and genuine expertise. Not a rehearsed pitch. Duel is solving a real problem, so the conversation isn’t, “ Here’s our platform, would you like a demo?” It’s, “ Here’s what’s broken about the way brands are building customer relationships today, and here’s a different way to think about it. ”

You’re in the room, to shift the conversation, bring a perspective the customer may not have considered, and help them see a better path forward.

We're Looking for Someone Who Will…

• Hunt, and keep hunting. At Duel, you’re often introducing a brand to an advocacy concept they haven’t encountered before. That means creating the opportunity from scratch: identifying the right accounts, finding a way in, earning attention, selling the idea of advocacy, building conviction with the buyer, and progressing the opportunity, all while continuing to build pipeline behind it. This is not an environment where established accounts, retainers, or inbound demand allow deals to run themselves.

• Show up as a consultant, not a seller. Some of our strongest brand relationships don’t begin with traditional outbound. They start with a warm introduction, a referral from a brand already on its advocacy journey, a conversation at an event, or a connection through the Duel community. Community sits at the heart of how we engage the market, and building that ecosystem will be a core part of your mandate.

• Build an ecosystem that becomes your pipeline. Meet people through events, introductions, your existing network, LinkedIn, and industry communities. Build genuine relationships that embed advocacy across the DTC, beauty, fashion, and retail landscape. There isn’t an inbound machine waiting to hand you qualified opportunities. Your network becomes your pipeline, and you’ll invest in it consistently.

• Lead with curiosity, not a pitch. We’re not selling software; we’re introducing a better way to grow a brand through advocacy. Success is the moment someone says, “I’ve never thought about it that way.” You get there by asking sharp questions, understanding someone’s world deeply, and helping them reframe the challenges they’re trying to solve.

• Deliver advocacy strategy, not product demos. Conversations with brands should feel like strategic consultations. You’ll understand where they are today against the pillars of advocacy: how engaged their customers are, whether they’ve built a product people genuinely want to advocate for, how clearly their purpose resonates, and what they’re already investing in across affiliate, influencer, and community. The thinking comes first; the platform comes later.

• Contribute to the flywheel, not just your number. You’ll work closely across Community, Brand Partnerships, and the wider GTM team. Every coffee chat, event, introduction, and brand conversation should generate insight that comes back into Duel. Help us deepen relationships, strengthen our community, and accelerate the advocacy flywheel. Your impact isn’t measured solely by what you close, but by the ecosystem you help build around us.

We'd Love to Hear from You If You Have…

• Agency and/or brand marketing experience. You’ve worked within a marketing, creative, or advertising agency, partnering directly with brands to solve commercial challenges and navigate complex stakeholder relationships. Brand-side experience is a strong complement, and a blend of agency and in-house experience is ideal. Exposure to retail, DTC, beauty, or fashion is a bonus.

• A naturally consultative approach. You know how to earn credibility, run strong discovery, and have meaningful commercial conversations with senior marketing leaders. You can understand someone’s world quickly, diagnose the real challenge, and bring a perspective that moves the conversation forward. Enterprise SaaS or solution-selling experience is welcome, but not essential.

• A hunter’s mentality. You’re comfortable creating opportunities rather than waiting for them to arrive. A strong network helps, but you don’t depend on it. You’re willing to dig into accounts, find a way in, prospect consistently, follow up, handle rejection, and keep building pipeline even when you’re progressing larger opportunities.

• Genuine curiosity. You ask thoughtful questions because you genuinely want to understand people’s goals, challenges, and motivations. You don’t hide behind scripts or rigid frameworks. You listen, adapt, dig deeper, and use what you learn to help someone see their challenge differently.

• Strong commercial acumen. You’re comfortable being accountable for pipeline, quota targets, and commercial outcomes, while recognising that the consistent results come from creating genuine value and conviction.

• Consistency and resilience. You’re happy rolling up your sleeves and doing the fundamentals exceptionally well, week after week. You have experience committing to the grind, and you have the discipline to maintain momentum through unanswered messages, lost opportunities, long sales cycles, and uncertainty.

• Comfort operating in ambiguity. You can experiment, assimilate and adapt without losing momentum. You bring the value realisation required to introduce brands to a different way of thinking about growth.

• A practical relationship with AI. You use AI to understand, sharpen a point of view, identify potential angles into an account, or move faster through the less monotonous parts of the job, freeing up more of your time and energy for the productive, human work that matters.

Person

This is a lead and individual contributor within a collaborative team. You lead through presence and contribution, not hierarchy. You bring energy into the room, share what you're hearing in the market, and help make the business smarter with what's happening in our world. You're eager to be in the office and engaged with the team, working closely with Advocacy Community and Brand Partnerships teams, rather than operating as a lone wolf. As the function matures, there may be scope to grow into a team lead or vertical owner, but right now the job is to be an exceptional individual contributor.

Our Culture

• We're building a remarkable company with remarkable people. Advocacy is our north star, for our customers and for the people who work here.

• We're a high trust, tight ship team, full of Bloody Brilliant & Utterly Lovely people doing their best work together.

• We value trust and freedom above all else, combined with deep ownership, execution, and candor.

• Our people hold real equity in Duel, and we take that ownership seriously.

AI-Native Leadership

We don't think the brands that win will be the ones that automate the most. We think they'll be the ones that use AI to deepen real human relationships at scale, and we're building Duel the same way. Being AI-first means we bring that thinking into every decision and every conversation. We look at every workflow, every task, every outsourced service, and every function, and ask whether it can be automated, optimized, or made better with AI. AIDA, our in-house hub for proving out AI use cases across the business, backs that with real investment

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Duel is committed to building a team where people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can do their best work. We hire on merit, and we know that a team which thinks and looks the same in every room will always carry blind spots the market will not forgive. Duel is an equal opportunity employer.

We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local law. This applies to every stage of employment, including hiring, compensation, promotion, and termination. We welcome applications from candidates of all races, ethnicities, ages, genders, gender identities, sexual orientations, religions, national origins, and abilities, and we provide reasonable accommodations for candidates and employees with disabilities throughout the hiring process and on the job.

In-Person and Remote Working Balance

We do much of our best work together in person, which is why we hire people within commuting distance of our offices. We also recognize the value of deep, focused work at home.

We are Hybrid First, a hybrid philosophy that gives you freedom and flexibility. You decide how you work best, as long as it's not at the expense of others.

Hybrid roles ask you to be in the office 3 days per week for the collaborative work that's harder to do apart, with the flexibility to work from home the rest of the time

Where You'll Work

Our US team works from Duel's New York City hub in Manhattan.

Our UK team works from Bloomsbury House in London, and we also have a smaller hub in Bristol.

How We Think About Pay

We set our salary ranges by benchmarking what the market pays for the level of person any role needs, not by a historical number and hoping people meet us partway. The range listed reflects where we genuinely expect to land based on experience and interview performance, and we pay at the top of it for candidates who meet or clear the bar. Where shares or commission applies, we'll walk you through the full structure before you're ever asked to accept anything.

Duel Perks & Package

• 401(k) matches up to 2%.

• Healthcare benefits, with 100% of employee only premiums covered by Duel.

• $350 toward your work from home setup.

• A company MacBook to work from.

• 25 days of PTO per year (prorated), in addition to selected observed public holidays and our end of year break, plus an unlimited flexible holiday policy that lets you take additional time off as needed, subject to approval and business needs.

Other benefits associated with this role begin after you successfully complete your three month onboarding period, including:

• Two additional days of leave for volunteering.

• A personal development budget and support.

• Fitness, wellbeing, and growth contributions.

Parental Leave & Support

• Paid parental leave for all eligible full time employees following the birth or adoption of a child, regardless of gender or caregiving role.

• Leave can be taken within the first year following a birth or adoption, and we support a flexible return through a phased schedule or remote arrangement where business needs allow.

If you need an accommodation at any point during our interview process, let Ibrahim, Talent Acquisition Lead know and we'll work with you to meet your needs.