Business Development Lead
Founding team · Lagos, Nigeria (Hybrid) · Full-time
We are looking for our first Business Development Lead: someone who can help turn a working product into trusted partnerships across Nigeria.
This is not a traditional sales role. You will not inherit a mature product, an established customer base or a polished playbook. You will work directly with the founder to shape how OPA enters the market, builds credibility and launches with the right partners.
We are looking for someone excited to build, not just sell. Success here comes from creating trusted partnerships, understanding what customers actually need, and helping shape where OPA goes next. Not from hitting a quarterly quota.
Where OPA actually is today
OPA’s emergency alerting works: a user triggers an alert and the trusted contacts they have registered are notified with their live location. That part is built, tested and running.
What comes next is a live incident view for families, then continuous location tracking. The institutional products, a monitoring dashboard for organisations and journey safety monitoring for lone workers, are planned but not yet built.
So your first months are not about aggressively selling unfinished software. They are about learning the market, building trust, testing assumptions and preparing partnerships that are ready when the commercial products land. We would rather build long-term trust than promise features that aren’t ready. If that sounds like the wrong kind of ambiguity, this is not the right role.
What you’ll do
- Build strategic partnerships with hospitals, security companies, universities, residential estates, employers, NGOs, telecommunications companies and public institutions
- Identify and secure pilot programmes that validate OPA in real environments
- Research how organisations evaluate and procure safety technology, including who decides and how long it takes
- Meet decision-makers and understand their operational challenges
- Represent OPA at conferences, networking events and industry meetings
- Help develop pricing, partnership models and go-to-market strategy
- Gather customer feedback and turn it into product insight
- Support fundraising efforts, grant applications and strategic partnerships
- Identify new markets and commercial opportunities across Nigeria
What we’re looking for
We care more about curiosity, integrity and execution than perfect credentials.
- Three to seven years in business development, strategic partnerships, enterprise sales or institutional sales
- Experience selling to or partnering with B2B organisations in Nigeria
- Strong relationship-building and negotiation skills
- Excellent written and verbal communication
- Confidence presenting to executives and senior decision-makers
- The ability to work independently at an early stage, without a playbook
Where the technology is going
OPA is a technology company and intends to stay one. Today the platform runs on mobile, cloud infrastructure and location services. Where we are heading involves applying machine learning to emergency response: understanding context from signals a person in danger cannot report themselves, and helping the right people act on it faster.
None of that is built yet, and we are deliberate about which of it belongs in a safety product at all. A system that ranks one person’s emergency below another’s has to be right. That care is part of the work, and part of what you would be explaining to partners.
Technical understanding
You do not need to be an engineer, but you should be comfortable discussing technology with customers, partners and investors, and know when to bring engineering into the conversation. Familiarity with any of these helps:
- Mobile applications
- Cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS or Google Cloud
- APIs and software integrations
- GPS, mapping and location services
- AI and machine learning concepts, and their limits
- Identity, authentication and security fundamentals
- Data protection and privacy
- SaaS and subscription business models
Nice to have
- Emergency management or public safety
- Healthcare
- Telecommunications
- Security services
- Insurance
- Enterprise SaaS
- Government partnerships
- Previous startup or founding-team experience
Your first ninety days
Success will not be measured by immediate sales. By the end of your first ninety days we would expect you to have:
- Built relationships with twenty-five to forty target organisations
- Established a qualified pipeline of pilot opportunities
- Produced OPA's first partnership strategy
- Delivered market feedback that changes a product decision
- Validated pricing assumptions against real conversations
- Identified grant and funding opportunities worth pursuing
Why join
- Work directly with the founder on everything commercial
- Influence product strategy from real market feedback
- Shape how OPA enters the market, from zero
- Build something with genuine social impact
- Grow with the company as it expands
Who thrives here
This role suits you if:
- You like problems without obvious answers
- You can hold a conversation with an engineer and with a hospital director, and adjust
- You would rather build a process than follow one
- You are comfortable deciding with incomplete information
- You care about technology that has real social consequences
It probably does not suit you if:
- You prefer a large organisation with clear structure and defined lanes
- You want thorough onboarding before taking ownership of anything
- You expect a mature product and an established sales process
We would rather say this plainly than waste your time or ours.
Travel and compensation
The role involves regular travel within Nigeria to meet partners, attend industry events and support pilot opportunities.
We will discuss compensation openly in our first conversation, including what we can offer today and how that changes as OPA grows. Ask early. We would rather have that conversation at the start than at the end.
We are not looking for someone to sell a finished company. We are looking for someone to help build one.
How to apply
Send your CV and a short note covering why OPA interests you, what excites you about this role, and what you would focus on in your first ninety days. We read every application and reply to all of them.
Apply for this role