Brand Partnerships Recruiters for Studios, Networks, Leagues and Brands
We recruit the people who put a brand inside a show, a season or a stadium, on whichever side of the deal you sit.
A brand partnerships recruiter finds the people who negotiate and run deals between a brand and a property, such as a studio, network, streamer, league or creator company. KORE1 recruits for both sides of that table.
Last updated: October 5, 2026
Both sides use the same job title. They’re hiring different people. Not even close.
On the property side, a brand partnerships manager sells. That’s a sales job. They package a season, a series, a venue or a creator’s audience and get a brand to pay for a place in it. On the brand side, the person with the identical title buys, and their job is to find the right property, negotiate what the brand gets and make sure it shows up on screen the way the contract says.
- This desk
- Heads of brand partnerships, partnerships managers and directors on either side, integration and partnership marketing leads, and the people who run sponsorship programs.
- Routed elsewhere
- Quota-carrying ad sales seats go to our sales recruiters. Producers who build live activations go to experiential marketing recruiters.
Partnerships hiring runs through the KORE1 marketing recruiters, alongside our content marketing staffing team, because so many of these deals end up as content somebody has to make. Samantha Litman runs the senior searches. Her 25-plus years in recruiting have been spent almost entirely inside entertainment, media and creative businesses.
Brand Partnerships Recruiters Start With One Question. Which Side of the Deal?
Read across. Each row is one term of the job, and the two columns are the same title as it gets written at a property and at a brand.
Brand partnerships manager, as posted by each side
Sells the dealStudio, network, streamer, league, creator company
Buys the dealThe brand
- Brings in
- SellsSponsor and integration revenue
- BuysReach, content and a story the brand couldn’t tell alone
- Reports to
- SellsThe head of ad sales or revenue
- BuysThe CMO or head of brand
- Judged on
- SellsBooked revenue and renewals
- BuysWhat the deal did for the brand, from awareness to sales
- Paid like
- SellsBase pay plus commission or a revenue bonus
- BuysSalary plus an annual bonus
- Federal job code
- SellsAdvertising sales agents, 41‑3011
- BuysMarketing managers, 11‑2021
Same two words at the top of both job posts. A different boss, a different scorecard and a different pay plan underneath.
Post the wrong column and the wrong people apply. A network that writes a brand-side description gets a stack of marketers who’ve never carried a revenue number, never sat across from a sponsor at renewal time and never had commission riding on one phone call. A brand that borrows a network’s posting gets sellers who’ll pitch your own budget back to you. Every time.
Some seats really do sit in the middle. A talent agency’s brand partnerships desk is technically on the selling side, but it sells a person, not an audience, and the job feels closer to representation than to ad sales. Tell us which you’ve got. We’ll search accordingly.
What a Brand Partnerships Recruiter Asks Before the Resume
A logo list proves somebody was in the room. It doesn’t show who did the work. Plenty of people can name the brands on their last show, and far fewer can tell you what the contract actually promised, so our screening goes after the parts that never make the case study. That’s where the job lives.
- Walk me through one deal from the first email to the signature. Who said no first?
- What did the brand get that it couldn’t have bought as a plain media buy?
- Which deal did you walk away from, and what did walking away cost you?
- When the integration aired, who checked it against the contract, you or someone else?
The first question sorts sellers from buyers fast. A good seller talks about packaging and price. Buyers who know the work go straight to fit, and to how they’d prove the money did something. Both are real skills, and you want the one your column asks for.
Samantha always starts somewhere plainer. What is their current situation? In partnerships that question carries extra weight, because a strong candidate with a big renewal still open usually won’t leave until it signs. Ask early, and you’ll know whether you’re hiring this month or after the deal closes.
$63,910
median pay for advertising sales agents in broadcasting and streaming
$176,310
median for sales managers in that same industry
$166,790
median for marketing managers across all U.S. industries
92%
KORE1 twelve-month retention, from its own placement records
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS, May 2025 release, yearly medians including commission. KORE1 placement records.
Why Brand Partnerships Salaries Look Wildly Different
Search the pay for this title and the salary sites won’t agree. They’re averaging two jobs. Two very different ones.
On the selling side the nearest federal code is advertising sales agents, and in broadcasting and streaming that code had a median of $63,910 in May 2025. Commission stretches it a long way, since the top tenth cleared $164,560. That’s a wide spread. Once a seller leads a team the code becomes sales managers, where the same industry’s median was $176,310.
The buying side looks like marketing managers, with a median of $166,790 across all industries, and a brand-side partnerships lead usually lands there or near it. Put the seller’s base next to the buyer’s salary and you’re $102,880 apart before anyone mentions a bonus. It’s a real gap. That’s the gap the aggregators blend into one meaningless average.
Price the seat by its column. Then by its scope. Our pay guide for marketing and creative roles covers the neighbors, including a creative director salary breakdown, and you can check a band for your metro before you post.
Plenty of these searches land in Los Angeles and New York, where the studios and the big media sellers sit. New York’s medians were $99,010 for advertising sales agents and $192,840 for marketing managers, and Los Angeles came in at $80,360 and $171,900, both above the national numbers for those two codes.
Demand is moving, too. Samantha is watching entertainment and creative companies build partnership work into teams they already have, rather than standing up whole new departments, and go after brand money that agencies used to collect by default. More companies hiring for the same thin pool of people who’ve closed these deals. That’s where a search gets slow.
The Seats Our Brand Partnerships Recruiters Fill
Each card is tagged with the side of the deal where that seat usually lives. Smaller teams fold two of these into one person all the time. Just write the posting to match.
Either side
Head of brand partnerships
Owns the strategy, the biggest relationships and the call on which deals the company should say no to.
Sells
Partnerships director, property side
Packages a season, a series or a venue into something a brand will pay for, then renews it.
Buys
Partnerships manager, brand side
Finds the right property, negotiates what the brand gets and proves afterward that it worked.
Either side
Integration producer
Turns the signed deal into what actually appears on screen, on the field or in the feed.
A program that renews every season usually earns a direct hire, because the value is in relationships that carry from one year to the next. Continuity pays. Samantha puts it simply. Recruiting is still a relationship business, and partnerships might be the purest case of it.
One tentpole deal and no plan after it? A contract integration producer can carry it through air date. Contract-to-hire fits when a team wants to watch someone close one full deal before committing to a salary, and with budgets tight, Samantha’s seeing more clients ask for it. Either route, we measure ourselves the same way, and KORE1’s retention at one year sits at 92%.
Some neighbors have their own pages. The brand strategist who decides what the brand stands for, the creative director who approves how the integration looks, the agency account director who manages the client and the media buyer placing the paid half of the plan all sit next door. And if your title list is getting confusing, read what marketing job titles tell candidates before you post.
Common Questions
What exactly does a brand partnerships recruiter do?
A brand partnerships recruiter finds people who negotiate and run deals between brands and properties like studios, networks, leagues and creator companies. KORE1 recruits for both the selling and the buying side of those deals.
Is brand partnerships a sales job or a marketing job?
Both, depending on who’s hiring. At a studio, network or league it’s a sales job paid partly on revenue, and at a brand it’s a marketing job paid as a salary with a bonus. The title stays the same, so the posting has to say which.
How much does a brand partnerships manager make?
$166,790 was the May 2025 BLS median for marketing managers across all industries, the nearest code for a brand-side partnerships manager. Property-side sellers map to advertising sales agents, whose median in broadcasting and streaming was $63,910 before commission, so pay depends heavily on which side the job sits.
How fast can we hire a head of brand partnerships?
Plan on a few weeks for a fresh opening and longer for one that’s stalled. In Samantha Litman’s recent work, a brand new opening with quick hiring managers has filled in two to three weeks, while a role that’s been filled and lost before tends to run one to two months. Open renewals slow it further, since good candidates rarely leave before a deal signs. Start before the renewal.
Can someone from ad sales move into a brand-side partnerships job?
Often, yes. A seller already knows how deals get priced and where the give is, which makes them a sharp buyer. The adjustment is learning to measure what the brand actually got out of the deal, in reach, content and sales, rather than what got booked on the seller’s side of the ledger that quarter.
How is brand partnerships different from influencer marketing?
Scale and structure. Influencer marketing usually pays individual creators for posts, while brand partnerships negotiates larger deals between two organizations that can bundle content, sponsorship and on-screen integration.
Tell Us Which Side of the Deal You’re Hiring For
Start with the side. Give us the title, the side and the deal that’s waiting on this hire. We’ll tell you where the candidates are and what the seat should pay.
Let’s Talk →Rather start on LinkedIn? Send Samantha Litman a note
