Strategic Partnerships & Technical Development Manager – Botanical & Pharma Ingredients

About the role

Palomba General Trading LLC is seeking a Strategic Partnerships & Technical Development Manager based in Dubai, working a hybrid, customer-facing role with regular regional travel. The position develops technically driven relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers, nutraceutical companies, formulation partners and specialised distributors across the GCC, turning botanical extracts, natural actives and specialised pharmaceutical ingredients into structured customer-development projects.

Key responsibilities

• Build strategic relationships with pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturers and identify new projects for botanical extracts and specialised actives.
• Qualify customer technical requirements before proposing products, and coordinate product specifications, samples, CoAs, TDS and supporting documentation.
• Manage technical discussions between customers and international manufacturers and follow customer evaluations from initial brief through technical approval.
• Identify suitable distributors and technical partners, and evaluate potential new international principals and ingredient manufacturers.
• Develop account-specific product strategies rather than generic catalogue selling, and support pricing, commercial negotiation and supply discussions after technical qualification.
• Maintain a structured pipeline of customer projects, evaluations and partnership opportunities.

Required profile

• 5+ years in pharmaceutical ingredients, nutraceutical ingredients, botanical extracts or related B2B markets.
• Experience working directly with pharmaceutical or nutraceutical manufacturers and with R&D, procurement, quality or regulatory teams.
• Ability to understand specifications, CoAs and technical documentation, and experience coordinating samples and customer evaluations.
• Strong commercial judgement and negotiation ability; experience developing distributors or strategic partners is highly valued.
• Fluent English; Arabic is an advantage.

What we offer

• Competitive fixed salary and performance-based bonus.
• GCC regional responsibility and high autonomy in strategic account development.
• Access to international botanical and pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturers and direct involvement in technically complex customer projects.
• Exposure to pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and functional health industries, with the chance to build long-term partnerships.