What This Role Is

Every year, millions of students apply to university. The decision shapes the rest of their lives — which country they live in, which careers open to them, who they become. And for most of them, the school they attend is the single biggest determinant of how well that decision gets made: the counselor they meet with, the platform that counselor uses, the conversations that happen in the months before they hit submit.

Roughly 100 school groups in the world collectively educate over a million of these students. Beyond them sit Ministries of Education running entire state and national systems where every public school student passes through the same counseling infrastructure — or fails to. Both are buying decisions where one signature moves an entire system onto a platform. Both are conversations where the people on the other side are sceptical, time-poor, and have been disappointed by tech vendors before. Both are still mostly being made school by school, on a patchwork of tools and goodwill, by buyers who have never had a platform partner they truly trusted.

That is the gap. It is the most consequential gap in the K12 counseling market today, and closing it is what this role exists to do.

Cialfo is the world’s leading AI-powered college counseling platform, used by 2,000+ schools to guide students through this decision. The counselor workflow is built. The student experience is built. Saige, our AI layer, is live. The product is not the question. The question is whether the school groups and government systems who most need this platform choose Cialfo as the partner they bet a decade on.

The Senior Director, K12 is Cialfo’s most senior commercial voice in the global school market. You’ll own the global enterprise pipeline across school groups and Ministries of Education, lead the team selling into individual schools, and define how Cialfo wins this market over the next five years.

What Makes This Role Different

Most senior K12 sales roles sit inside a single region or a single buyer type. This one runs across three commercial channels — school groups, government systems, and individual schools — with a tailwind no competitor has.

Cialfo doesn’t walk into these conversations alone. BridgeU sits beside it, serving international schools across the UK and Europe. Explore sits behind it, the AI outreach platform trusted by 1,000+ universities in 100+ countries. Kaaiser brings nearly thirty years of placement infrastructure. No competitor in the K12 counseling space can offer a school group, a Ministry, or an accreditation body the connective tissue across the entire student journey from K12 to enrolment. You can. That changes what you can sell, what you can negotiate, and what a long-term partnership with Cialfo can mean.

The broader overseas education industry is contracting. Cialfo is growing. The next era of this platform will be built on the partnerships closed in the next eighteen months — and the person who closes them is you.

What You Own

School group partnerships

• Identify, develop, and close high-value institutional partnerships with school groups, multi-school operators, and global accreditation bodies
• Build relationships at the level where they get decided — principals, heads of school, board members, and network-level decision-makers whose signatures move entire systems onto the platform
• Navigate complex institutional procurement and structure agreements that anchor Cialfo as the default for the network for years, not transactions reviewed cycle to cycle

Ministry of Education deals

• Own the strategy and execution for selling Cialfo into Ministries of Education and equivalent national or state-level bodies that buy on behalf of entire public school systems
• Build credibility with senior government stakeholders — ministers, director-generals, and the senior civil servants who run education policy and procurement — and read the political dynamics that determine whether a deal closes
• Run formal procurement (RFPs, tenders, framework agreements) and build the response capability to win them, including references, case studies, and the partner ecosystem a Ministry expects to see
• Prioritise the few geographies where the political and policy environment makes a national-scale deployment realistic over the many that aren’t, and structure multi-year contracts a government can defend publicly and Cialfo can deliver against profitably

The team selling into individual schools

• Lead the IC team that wins single-school logos across regions — set the bar, coach the craft, sit in on the deals that matter
• Build the playbook that converts standalone schools inside priority networks, so every IC win becomes a foothold for a future group-level or government-level conversation
• Develop the next generation of Cialfo’s commercial leaders — because this team is where they get built, and you treat that as a primary part of the job

Strategic market development and ecosystem leverage

• Define where Cialfo should be winning that it is not yet — new geographies, new network types, new government systems, new institutional segments — and build the commercial case for moving there
• Use the full Manifest portfolio (BridgeU, Explore, Kaaiser) to construct partnership structures no standalone vendor can match: multi-brand engagements, joint programmes with university partners, relationships embedded at the system level
• Partner with the VP of Global K12 to shape go-to-market strategy and influence product priorities based on what you’re hearing in the market

What Success Looks Like

The markers below reflect where Cialfo’s K12 motion is today. The business will have moved by the time you join — new networks in scope, new geographies opened, new Ministries in conversation. We’ll calibrate the specifics together once you’re in the seat. These are directional, not fixed.

You’ll start by building a complete picture of the current commercial landscape — the school groups that matter most, the government systems where Cialfo has a credible right to play, where the IC team is performing and where it isn’t. You’ll have a point of view on where to move first.

From there, things will be measurably better. The first lighthouse group deals will be closed or in late-stage negotiation. The first Ministry-level conversations will be running, with at least one credible procurement path identified. The IC team will be hitting a higher bar with a clearer playbook. The Manifest ecosystem story will be told consistently in every conversation.

Over time, Cialfo will be the default platform partner for serious international school groups across multiple regions, and will have won at least one national-system deployment that becomes a reference for the next ten. Group-level and government revenue will be a meaningful and growing share of K12 ARR. The pipeline for the following year will be anchored in relationships that compound for the next decade.

What You Bring

You’ve spent twelve to fifteen years in commercial roles, and a meaningful part of that has been closing enterprise deals where the buyer was a network or a government rather than a single decision-maker — in K12, higher education, public sector, or an adjacent institutional market where procurement is slow, political, and outcome-driven. You don’t lose patience when a partnership takes eighteen months to close. You’ve done it before.

You’ve sold to government before, or you’ve been close enough to it to know exactly what it takes — the RFP discipline, the political reading, the partner ecosystem you build before you can credibly bid, the patience to lose a cycle and come back stronger the next one. You don’t romanticise government sales and you don’t fear it. You see it for what it is: a slower, larger, more durable version of enterprise selling that pays back over a decade if you do it right.

You’ve led sales teams in high-stakes environments and built functions where the standard rises rather than drifts. You don’t see managing the team and personally landing the largest deals as competing demands — they’re the same job.

You think in markets, not territories. When you walk into a region you see the school networks, the Ministry priorities, the accreditation bodies, and the structural shifts that determine where the next ten years of growth comes from. You speak the language of education credibly — you can hold a real conversation about student outcomes and education policy, not just product features.

Most importantly, you read this and your first reaction was I know exactly what needs to happen here. That’s the person this role is for.

Why Manifest

Manifest Global is building the infrastructure for global human capital mobility — connecting students, schools, universities, and employers across 50+ countries. Our portfolio spans Cialfo, BridgeU, Kaaiser, and Explore. $700B flows annually in remittances from migrant workers. 85M workers will be missing from developed economies by 2030. We’re building the operating system that changes that. $91M raised. Still early.

The K12 platform sits at the front of that mission. The school groups and government systems that adopt it shape the trajectory of millions of students. The person who wins them from this seat is doing some of the most consequential commercial work in the group.

Five years from now, when a serious school group or Ministry of Education anywhere in the world thinks about how they will guide their students into the world’s universities, the platform partner they trust by default should be Cialfo. You are the person who makes that true.

Cialfo is a leading platform connecting students, higher education institutions, and counselors through technology-driven solutions. Launched in 2017 with a mission to make education accessible to 100 million students, Cialfo provides a range of mobile and web solutions to students, K-12 institutions, and higher education institutions. We’re one of the fastest-growing tech startups in the region, consistently charting new heights!

This position is with Cialfo, one of the brands under Manifest Global, which also includes BridgeU, Explore and Kaaiser. 

About this Role

With our fingers always on the pulse of the latest developments and technologies in education, the Growth team works to develop strong partnerships with K-12 schools and personalise solutions to enable the success of our clients. We’re an international team united by our common goal of making education accessible to students worldwide. If you are passionate about making a positive impact in the education sector and are a driven self-starter with a knack for networking, join our K-12 partnerships team to be an advocate for Cialfo!

• The Growth and Partnerships Associate at Cialfo drives the sales cycle in the assigned regional team - under the leadership of the Vice President- K12 and in collaboration with our Marketing managers and Client Partners.
• This role's key responsibility is to generate new prospects via lead generation events, engage with prospects, forge strong relationships, and win new K12 clients.

What You Will Be Doing

• Consultative sales! Understand the client's goals and challenges before offering solutions.
• Win over new clients by understanding their needs and challenging their perspective to show how Cialfo can help them achieve those goals.
• Identify and develop champions for the solution they plan to propose.
• Demonstrate market knowledge and be a centre of excellence to help clients realise the value of Cialfo solutions
• Effectively communicate the value of the Cialfo solution to every decision-maker or decision influencer.
• Demonstrate excellent pipeline progression with accurate documentation via CRM.
• Focus on meeting your individual goals while contributing to overall team targets.
• Coordinate and attend conferences and events to represent Cialfo.
• Execute outbound sales activities including building out your sales pipeline, prospecting via various channels, and following up via similar channels to reach the target.
• Collaborate with other K12 colleagues such as Client Partners, Client Experience Managers and Student Education Advisors to provide continuous value to clients.
• Build referenceable relationships and strategic partnerships.
• Meticulous and disciplined execution of CRM, other reporting tools, and sales SOPs.
• Virtual and physical presentations to a variety of stakeholders.
• Negotiate commercial terms, contracts, and agreements to complete the sale.
• Handle objections.

About You

• Qualifications
  • Bachelor’s degree or higher
• Experience
  • 1+ years B2B sales experience, preferably in the IT /Services and Education industry.
  • Solid understanding of enterprise SaaS applications and collaboration technology preferred.
  • Exposure to the Higher Education sector within the University or Career Counselor Community or similar Ed-tech companies preferred.
  • Proven track record of cold calling and prospecting to create new leads, achieving personal and team goals.
  • Willingness to travel.
  • Proven track record of being able to close deals virtually.
• Skills & Qualities
  • Driven by sales targets and KPI-driven culture
  • Proven track record of closing new opportunities.
  • Proven ability to build strong relationships, becoming a trusted advisor.
  • Strong communication and influencing skills, and a strong command of english language are a must.
  • Highly organised and goals-driven.
  • Interest in joining a fast-growing education technology startup.
  • Coachable and values feedback.
  • Proficiency with Excel and Sales CRM (Salesforce, etc) preferred.

This role will be based in Japan and the candidate should be based there.