Venture Client Manager (f/m/d) in Hamburg

Buy the technology that already exists. Prove it works inside a global market leader. Enable scaling.

Uplift Ventures builds and backs the next generation of category-defining deep tech companies in Physical AI, Energy, Enterprise AI and Logistics. Venture Clienting is how we bring that technology into our anchor industry: We find a real, owned business problem inside Jungheinrich, find the startup that already solves it, buy a pilot, prove the impact with hard numbers and hand a working solution over to the business. No equity, no exclusivity,the value comes from using the start-up's product, not from owning part of the company.

Venture Clienting is our newest pillar. The operating model, the process and the first pilots exist. The team that runs it at scale does not yet. That is why this role exists: You own Venture Clienting projects end to end, and you build the function that will run of them.

What you'll do

You take an unresolved business pain point and turn it into a solution adopted in daily operations. You work along our Discover Scout Buy Pilot Adopt process:

• Discover: Get into the business, run interviews and workshops with Jungheinrich business units, turn vague frustration into a precise, quantified problem statement with a named owner and a first business case. If there is no committed owner, you kill the case.
• Scout: Map the relevant start‑up market, build a longlist, qualify it down to a decision‑ready shortlist against knockout criteria and use‑case fit, run the demos and make a defensible recommendation.
• Buy: Get a young company through the corporate process jungle, steer pilot terms, data protection, IT security and supplier onboarding and establish a fast lane with procurement and legal. From start‑up-friendly payment terms to purchase order issued and pilot started.
• Pilot: Run the pilot as project lead: Kick‑off, hypotheses, KPIs, weekly steering, escalation, measurement against a baseline. You produce evidence, not anecdotes.
• Adopt: Land it and set it up for the long run. Secure business ownership, budget and production‑grade contracting so the solution survives after the pilot budget ends, help scaling it to further units and sites.

In your first months you run a pilot end to end with support and stress‑test our playbook against reality. From there you carry your own portfolio of projects, own the relationship with your business units and shape how we leverage a community of Venture ambassadors at Jungheinrich.

You will:

• Own Venture Clienting projects end to end, from business need to adopted solution
• Build the function itself: Methodology, templates, KPI and reporting logic. Institutionalize what works
• Grow the internal Venture Ambassador network and build relationships into business units, plants, IT, procurement and legal
• Open and maintain access to the start‑up ecosystem: Work closely with our VC team, external accelerators, universities and the Uplift portfolio
• Prepare analyses, pilot results and recommendations for gates, steering and management reporting
• Route opportunities across the Uplift platform: Some cases are better built or backed than bought
• Use AI and modern tooling to increase speed and decision quality in scouting, evaluation and reporting

This role is for you if

• You have run things end to end: Experience in Venture Clienting, VC, Venture Building, consulting, strategy or business development with projects you personally carried from problem to implementation, not just to a recommendation slide
• You can work a corporate without being frustrated by it: You get VPs, business owners, plant managers, IT, procurement and legal on board and know when a requirement is genuinely non‑negotiable
• You take problems apart: You hear "this process is painful" and come back with root causes, a quantified impact and a solvable problem statement
• You are close to technology and startups: You can assess an early‑stage company honestly and are genuinely curious about Enterprise AI, Logistics, Physical AI and Energy
• You are comfortable owning the outcome: Ambiguity, no fixed playbook for everything, decisions under uncertainty and you still ship
• You communicate and present convincingly up to management level

Bonus:

• Industry experience in logistics, material handling or industrial environments
• An existing network in the startup or VC ecosystem
• Experience building a function from scratch
• Strong AI and tooling fluency

Languages:

Fluent in German and English

What we offer

• Results you can point to: You give a start‑up its first industrial customer and a business unit a solution to a problem it has lived with for years. You see both happen within months.
• The hard part of innovation: Innovative ideas and technologies exists, getting them into an industrial organisation and scaled across sites is where it gets messy. That is the track record you build here.
• Real ownership: The function is young, so you decide how your projects run, what we standardize and where we deviate. And you carry the result.
• The team: Become part of a highly driven team

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