GDS Emerging Tech Relationships Strategist - Associate Director

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Job Title: GDS Emerging Tech Relationships Strategist

Job Span: Ecosystem and Alliances Program

Function: GDS ES Growth & Innovation

Skill Level: High

Sub Function: Alliances Partner Ops CoE

Role Purpose

The GDS Emerging Tech Relationships Strategist is an Associate Director-level role that exists to shape, activate, and strengthen EY’s emerging technology ecosystem relationships in alignment with strategic alliance priorities. The role will operate as a senior strategic advisor and execution leader, helping identify high-potential emerging technology companies, translate market signals into actionable relationship opportunities, and drive structured engagement models that support growth, innovation, and differentiated market positioning. Working closely with senior stakeholders across Alliances, Growth & Innovation, business teams, and enabling functions, the role will bring strategic judgment, ecosystem insight, and disciplined execution to advance priority relationships and convert emerging technology opportunities into measurable business value.

Role Summary

The Emerging Tech Relationships Strategist will play a senior role in shaping and orchestrating EY GDS’s engagement with priority emerging technology companies, venture-backed innovators, and ecosystem partners. This role moves beyond operational coordination to provide strategic market sensing, relationship strategy, opportunity framing, stakeholder advisory, and governance leadership. The individual will be expected to assess emerging technology trends, identify and qualify potential relationship opportunities, develop strategic narratives and executive-ready materials, and guide initiatives from discovery through engagement readiness. Success in this position will be defined by the ability to combine ecosystem commercial awareness, structured problem solving, senior stakeholder management, and execution discipline to influence decisions, create momentum, and support scalable alliance and ecosystem growth across geographies.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead strategic market sensing across priority emerging technology domains, translating ecosystem trends, investment signals, and competitor movements into actionable relationship opportunities.
• Identify, assess, and prioritize emerging technology companies and ecosystem players based on strategic relevance, market potential, alliance adjacency, and business value for EY.
• Develop structured opportunity assessments, including company positioning, leadership and investor context, technology relevance, potential use cases, relationship entry points, and recommended engagement pathways.
• Leverage market intelligence platforms, AI-enabled research, expert inputs, and internal knowledge sources to build high-quality insights that inform senior stakeholder decisions.
• Maintain a strategic view of the emerging relationships pipeline, ensuring that opportunities are evaluated consistently, documented appropriately, and progressed with clear rationale and next steps.
• Develop executive-ready briefs, strategic point-of-view materials, partner profiles, opportunity notes, and leadership presentations that clearly articulate business relevance and recommended actions.
• Translate research and stakeholder inputs into compelling narratives that support relationship prioritization, engagement planning, and governance discussions.
• Provide senior-level quality control over content, ensuring materials are accurate, strategically framed, concise, and suitable for leadership consumption.
• Create and maintain reusable frameworks, templates, and briefing structures that improve consistency, speed, and quality across emerging relationship initiatives.
• Drive structured execution of strategic ecosystem initiatives, ensuring clear objectives, milestones, ownership, governance rhythms, and progress visibility.
• Partner with senior stakeholders to shape engagement plans for priority companies, including preparation for leadership connects, VC interactions, market visits, and internal decision forums.
• Anticipate risks, dependencies, and decision points across workstreams, proactively escalating issues and recommending mitigation options.
• Establish disciplined tracking and governance mechanisms that enable leaders to monitor progress, evaluate outcomes, and make informed prioritization decisions.

Relationship & System Management

• Own the strategic integrity and continuity of relationship records, ensuring that CRM and internal systems reflect current relationship status, engagement history, opportunity context, and leadership actions.
• Monitor priority companies and ecosystem relationships to identify progression opportunities, follow-up needs, potential risks, and areas requiring stakeholder intervention.
• Ensure data quality and governance across CRM, BRIDGE, GIS, ERIP trackers, and related tools, enabling reliable reporting and decision-making.

Reporting & Performance Tracking

• Define and maintain management reporting that provides leadership with clear visibility into pipeline health, relationship progression, strategic priorities, risks, and outcomes.
• Develop meaningful performance indicators for ERIP, program, and function-level reporting, ensuring insights go beyond activity tracking to support decision-making and prioritization.
• Prepare concise leadership updates, governance summaries, and analytical commentary that highlight progress, constraints, decisions required, and recommended next actions.

Cross‑Team Coordination

• Act as a senior liaison across Alliances, business teams, Risk Management Services, and enabling functions to align priorities, clarify ownership, and accelerate relationship progression.
• Use judgment and stakeholder influence to resolve ambiguity, manage competing priorities, and move initiatives forward across global teams and time zones.
• Provide senior coverage and continuity for priority workstreams, ensuring responsiveness to US-based stakeholders and effective collaboration across geographies.

General Operational Support

• Contribute to continuous improvement of the emerging relationships operating model, including frameworks, governance routines, engagement playbooks, and reporting mechanisms.
• Provide thought partnership and surge support on strategic ecosystem priorities, special projects, and leadership requests as business needs evolve.

Knowledge Requirements:

• Alliance & Ecosystem Operations Context
• Strong understanding of alliance, ecosystem, and emerging relationship models, including how strategic relationships are identified, qualified, activated, governed, and scaled.
• Knowledge of emerging technology markets, innovation ecosystems, venture-backed company dynamics, and the strategic considerations that influence partner relevance and business fit.
• Ability to connect ecosystem intelligence to business priorities, alliance objectives, client relevance, and growth opportunities.

Market & Company Research Fundamentals

• Advanced market and company research capability, including trend analysis, ecosystem mapping, company profiling, investor and leadership research, and opportunity qualification.
• Familiarity with market intelligence platforms such as PitchBook or similar tools, with the ability to interpret data and translate it into strategically useful insights.
• Practical understanding of how AI-enabled research and productivity tools can be used to improve discovery, synthesis, analysis, and executive content development.

Program & PMO Concepts

• Strong understanding of strategic program management, governance design, stakeholder alignment, dependency management, risk escalation, and executive reporting.
• Knowledge of how ERIP and related ecosystem initiatives can be structured, monitored, and reported to support leadership decision-making and measurable progress.

Systems & Data Management

• Strong familiarity with CRM systems and enterprise tracking tools used to manage relationship pipelines, company intelligence, governance actions, and business opportunities.
• Understanding of data governance, system discipline, traceability, and reporting integrity across multiple tools such as CRM, BRIDGE, GIS, and ERIP trackers.

Skill Requirements:

• Ability to evaluate emerging technology companies and ecosystem opportunities through a strategic, commercial, and market-relevance lens.
• Strong judgment in prioritizing opportunities, framing recommendations, and identifying where leadership attention or intervention is required.
• Ability to synthesize ambiguous inputs into clear options, implications, and recommended next steps for senior stakeholders.

Organization & Coordination

• Strong ability to lead complex, multi-stakeholder workstreams with structure, discipline, and ownership.
• Ability to manage priorities, dependencies, governance forums, timelines, risks, and escalations across global teams.
• Comfort operating independently as a senior resource, bringing clarity and momentum to ambiguous or evolving priorities.
• Reliable, responsive, and disciplined in supporting senior stakeholders, particularly across US ET or CT working hours.

Business Communication

• Excellent executive communication skills, with the ability to influence, advise, and engage senior stakeholders with clarity and confidence.
• Ability to convert complex research, market intelligence, and stakeholder inputs into crisp strategic narratives and decision-ready outputs.
• Strong stakeholder management capability, including the ability to manage ambiguity, align diverse perspectives, and escalate issues costructively.

Content Preparation & Presentation Skills

• Proven ability to develop high-quality executive presentations, strategic briefs, opportunity notes, governance updates, and leadership-ready documents.
• Strong sense of narrative, structure, visual clarity, and audience relevance when preparing materials for senior leaders.
• Ability to standardize and improve content frameworks to support scalable execution across ecosystem initiatives.

Reporting & Performance Tracking

• Ability to define, interpret, and communicate meaningful performance indicators across ERIP, program, and function-level reporting.
• Strong analytical capability to move beyond status updates and provide insight-led commentary on progress, risks, decisions required, and outcomes.
• Ability to create reporting outputs that are accurate, timely, governance-ready, and useful for senior leadership prioritization.

Other Guidance:

Academics & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Technology, Strategy, Innovation, or a related discipline; MBA or equivalent postgraduate qualification preferred.
• 15+ years of experience in alliances, ecosystem strategy, emerging technology, innovation, corporate strategy, strategic program leadership, consulting, professional services, or ecosystem-driven business environments.
• Prior experience within a Big Four, global systems integrator, technology alliance organization, venture ecosystem, or global professional services environment strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience working with senior stakeholders across geographies and time zones, with the maturity to operate at Associate Director / senior manager level in a global delivery model.

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