Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

About the role

The Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships will build and maintain essential relationships with key national customers, particularly in the Data Center/Mission Critical space, and work with various Kelso Operating Companies to deliver solutions.

Responsibilities

• Develop and Maintain Key Customer Relationships, especially with large-scale Data Center and other Mission Critical players.
• Create and maintain a list of decision-makers for key customers and cultivate relationships with them in order to understand their pain points.
• Formulate solutions to their problems using the combined resources of the Kelso platform (including mechanical, electrical, plumbing, building automation, prefabrication, engineered solutions, retrofits, and service/preventive maintenance).
• Create strategies to increase Direct-to-Owner work with these customers.
• Establish and maintain executive relationships with facility owners, developers, general contractors, construction managers, program managers, and multi-site end users.
• Represent Kelso at the national level with strategic accounts, industry associations, and major market events.
• Orchestrate the hand-off.
• Match qualified opportunities to the operating company or companies best positioned to win and deliver them, based on geography, trade capability, capacity, and client fit.
• Partner with operating company presidents and their preconstruction and estimating teams to transition pursuits cleanly, with full context and warm introductions.
• Stay engaged throughout, acting as an executive sponsor and relationship owner.
• Build multi-opco solutions where a single client need spans trades or regions.
• Establish CRM discipline, pipeline reporting, and pursuit governance across the platform.
• Define what a qualified opportunity looks like and hold the standard.
• Provide market intelligence to executive leadership on demand trends, competitive positioning, and end-market shifts.
• Partner with Kelso Leadership to identify where strategic acquisitions could accelerate access to a market or capability.
• Recruit, develop, and lead a business development team as the function scales.
• Act as a mentor and Subject Matter Expert to various Business Development personnel within Kelso Operating Companies.

Requirements

• 12+ years in business development, sales, or preconstruction leadership within MEP, specialty trade, general contracting, or industrial services.
• Demonstrated, existing relationships with key players in the Data Center space and the ability to cultivate new ones.
• Demonstrated record of sourcing and influencing large, complex construction or facilities opportunities — the kind measured in tens and hundreds of millions, not thousands.
• Executive-level relationships with owners, developers, GCs, or multi-site end users, and the credibility to open doors at that level.
• Working fluency in MEP scopes, construction delivery methods, and the preconstruction process — enough to qualify an opportunity accurately and speak credibly with a client's technical team.
• Experience operating in a decentralized or multi-entity organization, with the influence skills to get results from people who don't report to you.
• Willingness to travel 50%.
• Access to a major hub airport or willingness to relocate to Salt Lake City.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in a private equity–backed platform, roll-up, or multi-brand operating environment.
• Familiarity with design-build and design-assist delivery.
• Experience selling recurring service and maintenance agreements alongside capital projects.
• Prior experience building a business development function rather than inheriting one.