Strategic Partnership Lead, Healthcare

Strategic Partnership Lead, Healthcare

Durham, North Carolina

About Us

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation's most pressing problems.

About Trase:

Trase is AI, Uncomplicated. Trase empowers enterprise leaders to harness the full potential of AI without the associated complexity and risks. We are an end-to-end solution for deploying, managing, and optimizing AI in the enterprise. Our platform is an agentic operating system designed for regulated environments. It enables reliable execution of long-lived workflows, secure deployment across environments, and full auditability of system behavior. Trase has raised $10.5M in pre-seed funding from Red Cell Partners, with active deployments across healthcare, national security, and enterprise environments.

About the Role:

Operating as the primary liaison at Duke Health, located in the Research Triangle, you will lead the partnership lifecycle for our anchor health system customer—one of the most sophisticated academic medical center ecosystems in the country—acting as a consultative advisor to clinical, operational, and executive stakeholders to drive AI transformation from initial discovery through scaled implementation.

In this role, you will work at the intersection of product strategy, enterprise deployment, and go-to-market for agentic AI systems, ensuring Trase delivers measurable operational value to our most critical healthcare partner. You will be instrumental in bringing operational AI from concept to production – defining high-value use cases, shaping technical and deal strategy, and scaling across service lines at a major Academic Medical Center, their regional affiliate network, and beyond.

Core Responsibilities:

Agentic AI Strategy & Roadmap

• Engage C-suite, clinical, operational, IT, academic, and research leaders to understand the strategic priorities across service lines (i.e., cardiology, primary care, oncology, DCRI, etc.) and map them to Trase agentic capabilities.
• Surface competitive intelligence of healthcare use cases gaining market traction to inform the joint Duke-Trase product roadmap and go-to-market strategy.
• Co-manage the quarterly Joint Steering Committee meeting and iterate on the charter as the partnership progressive to meet our collaborative objectives.

Use Case Discovery and Expansion

• Build the business cases and ROI frameworks that decision-makers need to select and prioritize Agentic use cases — clinical impact narratives (i.e., impact cards), financial models, and value stories grounded in real clinical data.
• Partner closely with Trase product and engineering, Trase technical program managers, and Duke clinical leads to translate partner needs and requirements into scoped engagements.
• Navigate legal, procurement, compliance, clinical, and IT governance processes across large, matrixed health system organizations. This involves leading multi-disciplinary reviews to ensure that all AI deployments adhere to institutional safety standards, data privacy regulations, and complex hospital system bylaws.
• Proactively identify potential regulatory bottlenecks and collaborate with internal Trase legal and security teams to streamline the path from initial technical discovery to formal procurement and clinical activation.
• Structure and negotiate Statements of Work (SOWs) within the established enterprise agreement, ensuring each engagement is clearly defined with measurable milestones and success criteria.
• Collaborate with internal Trase legal, security, and product teams to ensure all negotiated SOWs align with the partner's clinical & IT requirements.
• Proactively manage the lifecycle of these agreements, from initial technical discovery and scoping to formal procurement and eventual clinical activation and expansion to additional service lines.

Change Management & Institutional Advocacy

• Act as an exceptional relationship builder, navigating internal dynamics and organizational inertia to drive the cultural adoption of AI workflows.
• Create and own the change management playbook: identify clinical champions, manage stakeholder expectations, and resolve implementation friction to ensure long-term success.
• Advise on technical governance, AI safety, and auditability to help partners navigate highly regulated healthcare environments.
• Develop and maintain a living account plan for the account — mapping stakeholder relationships, expansion opportunities, adoption health, and 12–24 month priorities. This document is an institutional asset, not a sales artifact.
• Own escalations and navigate setbacks without losing the relationship. When implementations are bumpy or expectations aren't met, you're the person who holds the trust together and drives resolution.
• Coordinate collaborative research and marketing efforts (i.e., case studies, blog posts, publications, etc.), aligning stakeholders and advancing descriptive and research publications under a joint governance framework.
• Contribute to building Trase's commercial playbook for health systems — you're among the early team members, and your learnings will shape how we scale.
• Represent Trase at regional and national healthcare conferences and industry events.

You're a Strong Fit If You:

• Have 5-10 years of experience in healthcare consulting, management consulting, clinical operations, health system operations, medical informatics, or a high-performance commercial role at a health-tech company.
• Have foundational knowledge of clinical and administrative healthcare workflows; can translate complex clinical needs into technical AI capabilities, ensuring Trase delivers measurable operational value.
• Have deep knowledge of healthcare data; have experience managing complex technical integrations, including EHR systems (Epic and Cerner), Outlook, fax servers, telephone systems, HIEs, and remote monitoring devices.
• Have sold into — or worked directly inside — academic medical centers or large integrated delivery networks.
• Have previously managed complex, multi-stakeholder deals, keeping them moving without losing the relationship.
• Are a builder: you don't wait for the playbook, you write it.
• Lead with curiosity and genuine empathy. You're interested in how our partner actually works — their culture, their pressures, their internal politics — not just what you can sell to them.
• Have built relationships that outlasted deals. You can point to customers where you were trusted not because you closed something, but because you showed up consistently and made the customer more successful.
• Are a steward, not just a hunter. You understand that at a marquee customer, protecting the relationship is as important as growing it — and you know the difference between the two.
• Are based in or willing to relocate to the Durham, NC area — this role requires consistent on-site presence with your accounts.
• Direct clinical experience (e.g., practicing physician, nurse, or clinical researcher) is a strong plus.

Why Trase:

• Deployed platform, real results. We're not selling a roadmap. Trase is in production at leading health systems with demonstrated clinical and financial outcomes.
• A defining market moment. Every health system leadership team in the country is trying to figure out how to operationalize AI at scale. You'll be in those rooms, shaping those decisions.
• True ownership. You're not the tenth AE. You're building the territory, the relationships, and the commercial motion. The people who join now define how this company operates for years.
• Backed by serious investors. Trase is a Red Cell Partners company with institutional backing and a leadership team that has operated at scale — including our President, formerly VP of AI/ML at AWS.

Compensation: Base salary of $175,000-$200,000 plus bonus. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.

Our Red Cell Partners Benefits:

• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement with strong performance as the firm grows
• 100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family.
• Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay.
• Unlimited PTO, with management approval.
• Opportunities for professional development and continued learning.
• Optional 401K, FSA, and equity incentives available.
• Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind.
• Cost effective GLP-1 solutions available through Crux.

We're an Equal Opportunity Employer: You'll receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability.