Career Opportunity at PorterShed – Senior Innovation Catalyst

The Role 

The PorterShed is seeking a Senior Innovation Catalyst with responsibility for special projects to work as a member of our cross-functional Innovation team. Working alongside a team of ambitious, curious people, you will play a vital role in building a culture of innovation and be the lead of key projects that will deliver on our ambition for the West of Ireland.  If you’re motivated by both Leading projects and rolling up your sleeves this will be a phenomenal role for you.

Main Responsibilities

Start-up Engagement:

• Actively scout for innovative startups and Founders throughout the region through on-site and remote programme support and engagement.
• Provide mentorship, coaching, and resources to start-ups to enhance their growth and success.
• Establish and build technical relationships within the startup ecosystem, including the incubators and VCs.

Partnership Facilitation:

• Collaborate with corporate organisations to identify innovation needs and opportunities.
• Foster strategic partnerships between start-ups and corporations to enable knowledge exchange, joint ventures, and investment opportunities.
• Engage with regional, national, and international funding organisations to further PorterShed strategic objectives alongside policy initiatives for innovation and technology.

Accelerator and Innovation Programmes: 

• Work with the PorterShed Programmes team, to design and deliver startup events such as hackathons and user groups.
• Build and maintain connections with experts in our region for mentoring, speaking and training input. 
• Utilise your expertise in the tech industry to identify high-potential ventures with innovative ideas and products.
• Develop and deliver world-class startup innovation programmes to accelerate ideas: Including Programme design, refinement and execution to meet the needs of partners and participants
• Manage relationships with partners and teams to ensure both are achieving maximum value from the programme.

Special Projects:

• Organise, lead, and execute company projects that may fall outside the scope of regular duties. 
• Responsible for defining the project scope, objectives, deliverables, and success criteria in collaboration with the project sponsor and key stakeholders. 
• Plan and execute project activities, such as budgeting, scheduling, risk management, quality assurance, communication, and stakeholder engagement. 
• Lead and motivate the project team, which may include internal and external resources from various backgrounds. 

Required Experience:

• Practical operational experience including managing the budget, design and implementation of innovation programmes.
• Previous start-up, incubator, innovation lab, growth accelerator and/or design and innovation experience.
• Project management experience is a distinct advantage.

About You: 

• You are passionate about helping Startups and have a unique combination of entrepreneurship experience, business acumen and strong interpersonal skills. 
• You are passionate about the potential for accelerator programmes to enable entrepreneurship, startups and new technologies to make a positive impact on companies, the economy and society. 
• You are interested in how innovation is driven in large established organisations and how this can be facilitated to create win-win scenarios with startups.
• A people person. You are an effective communicator and can collaborate across departments and audiences. You also have experience running a startup engagement programme.
• A genuine desire to make an impact on the West and North West and accelerate the Irish startup ecosystem.
• A champion for Diversity and Inclusion.

Contract Duration: 3 years with option to renew. 
Competitive total compensation package for the right candidate. 
Travel requirements up to 30%

PORTERSHED at GALWAY CITY INNOVATION DISTRICT OVERVIEW

The Galway City Innovation District (‘GCID’) was founded in 2015 to develop an innovation district in downtown Galway City and accelerate the growth of the regional technology ecosystem. The primary focus of GCID is to create high-value sustainable tech jobs in the West of Ireland. In 2016, GCID opened its first building, the PorterShed A Naide,  In 2022 GCID continued its expansion by opening PorterShd A hAon and A Dó in downtown Galway. The Board and management team at GCID are ambitious and driven, but most importantly we love what we do.