Senior Partnership Manager, Externships

About Stepful:

Stepful is reimagining allied healthcare training by offering affordable, online, instructor-led, and AI-supported programs that help learners—especially those from underserved communities—launch high-demand healthcare careers.

In addition to our direct-to-consumer training, Stepful partners with leading healthcare institutions to build talent pipelines and address the growing shortage of allied health workers. Our graduates, including Medical Assistants, Pharmacy Technicians and more, go on to work at major employers like CVS, NY-Presbyterian, and Walgreens.

Stepful is backed by Y Combinator, Reach Capital, and AlleyCorp, with a recent $31.5M Series B led by Oak HC/FT. Additionally, we were named the #1 EdTech company in the U.S. by TIME for 2025 and to GSV's 150 Most Transformational Growth Companies in Digital Learning.

We’re unlocking the full potential of the global workforce—improving access to quality healthcare for everyone, everywhere.

Our values:

We credit much of our success to our exceptional team. We’re looking for mission-driven individuals who thrive in fast-paced, sometimes ambiguous environments, and embody our four core values:

Care first: We do whatever it takes for our students to succeed.

Learn quickly: We test, learn with data, and iterate.

Build together: We win when we rely on each other.

Own it: We show up, take initiative, and show pride.

The opportunity:

As a Senior Partnership Manager, you’ll be at the center of Stepful’s ability to fulfill its mission: placing high-quality, job-ready graduates into real-world clinical experiences that launch healthcare careers.

You will own relationships with Stepful’s most strategic clinical partners and be responsible for growing our national externship footprint. You’ll partner with health systems, pharmacies, and other providers to expand capacity, ensure high-quality student experiences, and create pathways from externships into full-time roles. You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with sales, operations, and learning to align supply, demand, and execution.

This is a unique opportunity to scale a critical infrastructure layer in the healthcare workforce pipeline.

What you’ll do:

• Serve as the primary point of contact for top-tier partners, building strong relationships, addressing concerns effectively, and opening new expansion opportunities.

• Establish and own feedback loops from partners, translating insights into actionable recommendations for our operations and learning teams.

• Monitor and improve key metrics, including new site activation, seat retention and growth, and capacity utilization.

• Create playbooks to activate and expand seats at scale across all of our clinical partners, and manage their implementation and improvement through our team of Externship Coordinators.

• Act as a partner advocate, providing internal teams with feedback on how we can evolve our solution and operations to better serve our externship partners.

• Work collaboratively with our enterprise sales team to unlock externship capacity at key enterprise partners and participate in team pitches.

What you’ll bring:

• You have proven experience independently managing senior client relationships at large, complex organizations – building trust, understanding needs, managing difficult conversations, and influencing clients

• You excel at driving alignment across teams and balancing client needs with organizational priorities

• You have strong commercial acumen – a knack for understanding opportunities to better serve a client, and the ability to influence toward deepening a partnership.

• You love operating both at both the “big picture” and “detailed” altitudes – you can think strategically, and execute to bring that vision to life

• You have excellent verbal and written (e.g., client-ready slides, emails) communication skills

• You love systems-building and creating scalable infrastructure from the ground up

• You’re an effective manager who can set ambitious goals, motivate teams to over-achieve, and oversee large initiatives end-to-end

Bonus points if:

• You have worked in management consulting or a B2B go-to-market role (e.g., solutions consulting, account management, client success, sales, business development, strategic partnerships)

• Experience working in education, talent/workforce development, healthcare, or B2B tech-enabled services companies

• You are excited to help build a new function – partnering to evolve our ways of working, systems, and tools

Interview Process:

• Introductory call with Talent Acquisition team member

• Interview with Hiring Manager

• Take-Home Assignment

• Virtual Panel Interview

• On-Site Panel Interview

Benefits and Compensation:

• Meaningful Equity Stake

• Subsidized Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance plan options

• 401(k)

• FSA, HSA and commuter benefits

• Learning stipend

• Open vacation policy, including:

  • Guidance of 15 days PTO annually

  • Stepful closed the last week of December

  • 15 work-from-anywhere days

  • 10 public holidays observed for 2025

The target base salary range for this opportunity is $140,000 - $170,000 and is part of a competitive total rewards package that includes equity and benefits. Individual pay may vary from the target range and is determined by a number of factors including experience, internal pay equity and other relevant business considerations.

Please note we do not have a bonus structure at this time so all cash compensation will come in the form of base salary. The total compensation package will also include our benefits package and an equity (ISOs) package.

Stepful is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.