Senior Affiliates & Partnerships Manager | Cult Beauty

Life at THG Beauty 

We know that beauty isn’t one-size-fits-all. Our portfolio of leading retailers and iconic beauty brands caters to everyone, everywhere, empowering customers all over the world to look and feel fantastic.

By combining our portfolio of owned brands inclusive of ESPA, Ameliorate and Christophe Robin, with a marketplace for over 1,300 third-party beauty brands through online retail sites LOOKFANTASTIC, Cult Beauty, and Dermstore, THG Beauty's ambition is to be the global digital partner of choice across the beauty industry, supporting the channel shift to online.

THG Beauty’s breadth of relationships is unique to the beauty market; it engages with brands as a retailer, a brand owner, and a product developer and manufacturer, making it the industry’s digital strategic leader.

About Cult Beauty 

Cult Beauty is one of the UK's leading online beauty destinations, known for a curated, expert-led edit of the best emerging and established beauty brands. As part of THG, Cult Beauty combines an entrepreneurial, fast-moving culture with the scale, data and technology of a global e-commerce group. The affiliates and partnerships channel is a genuine growth priority for the business, with strong performance to date and significant headroom to scale reach, revenue and brand awareness over the next 12–24 months.

Why be a Senior Affiliates & Partnerships Manager at THG Beauty? 

We're looking for a Senior Affiliates & Partnerships Manager to take ownership of Cult Beauty's affiliate channel and lead its next phase of growth. This is a hands-on role; you'll set the strategy and own the numbers. You will also be in the detail, planning activations, negotiating placements, managing budgets in real time, and reporting on performance. It suits someone who is equally comfortable building a forecast model as they are briefing a publisher or optimising a live campaign.

You'll own the channel's budget end-to-end, from annual and quarterly planning and forecasting through to in-month tracking, reforecasting and reconciliation against actuals, while also executing the campaigns and activations that bring the strategy to life. You'll use data, including media mix modelling (MMM) and other cross-channel measurement, to understand the channel's true incremental contribution and its role in the wider marketing mix, and you'll look for opportunities for the channel to support broader brand awareness goals, not just direct performance.

As Senior Affiliates & Partnerships Manager you’ll:  

Channel strategy & scale

• Own the affiliate and partnerships strategy for Cult Beauty, identifying and prioritising the highest-value opportunities to scale reach, revenue and new customer acquisition.
• Build the channel out from its current base, expanding the partner mix across content, cashback, loyalty, influencer-affiliate and technology partners, while protecting margin and brand value.
• Identify and develop opportunities for the channel to support wider brand awareness objectives, working with brand and content teams to use partnerships (e.g. content, video and influencer-affiliate placements) to build reach and consideration alongside direct performance.
• Keep the channel's commercial model, commission structure and partner tiering under continuous review, benchmarking against market practice.

Budget planning, forecasting & management

• Lead annual and quarterly budget planning and revenue/commission forecasting for the channel, working closely with finance and the wider marketing leadership team.
• Own in-month budget management and pacing, tracking spend and commission against forecast, reforecasting as needed, and flagging variances before they become a problem.
• Build and maintain robust forecasting models that link activity, seasonality and commercial terms to expected return, and use these to make the case for investment.
• Apply media mix modelling (MMM) outputs and other cross-channel measurement to inform budget allocation, understand the channel's incremental contribution, and stress-test planning assumptions against the wider marketing mix.
• Reconcile monthly performance against budget and finance records, ensuring accurate, timely reporting on channel P&L.

Activation execution & campaign management

• Plan and execute the affiliate activation calendar, from always-on placements through to peak trading moments (e.g. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, key beauty launches) and brand awareness activity.
• Brief, negotiate and manage relationships with affiliate networks, publishers, content creators and technology partners to secure high-quality, cost-effective placements.
• Own day-to-day channel operations: commission structuring, tracking and validation, compliance, and troubleshooting technical or performance issues.
• Use AI-driven tools and optimization, for example automated bid/commission optimisation, AI-assisted content, creative or audience targeting to improve campaign efficiency and free up time for strategic activity.

Data, insight & reporting

• Use data to drive decisions across the channel, analysing performance by partner, placement and campaign to identify what's working and reallocate budget accordingly.
• Own regular and ad hoc reporting for senior stakeholders, translating channel performance into clear commercial insight and recommendations.
• Partner with wider analytics/BI teams to improve attribution, measurement and incrementality understanding for the channel.

Leadership & collaboration

• Lead, coach and develop the affiliates team, setting clear priorities and creating capacity to scale as the channel grows.
• Act as the primary point of contact for the affiliates channel with cross-functional teams, including brand, finance and commercial, ensuring alignment on priorities and investment.
• Collaborate closely with other marketing channels, including paid social, PR, influencer and CRM to align messaging, avoid duplication of partner relationships, and ensure affiliate activity is planned as part of an integrated, cross-channel marketing calendar.
• Represent Cult Beauty externally with networks, agencies and partners, building a reputation as a commercially sharp, collaborative partner.

What skills and experience do I need for this role? 

• Proven experience managing an affiliate/partnerships channel in a fast-paced e-commerce, retail or beauty environment, ideally at Manager level or above already.
• Strong data acumen: confident building and interrogating models in Excel/Google Sheets, comfortable working across GA4/BI tools and media mix modelling (MMM) or cross-channel measurement outputs, and able to translate data into a clear commercial story.
• Demonstrable experience owning a budget end-to-end: annual/quarterly planning and forecasting through to in-month management, pacing and reconciliation with finance.
• Hands-on experience planning and executing affiliate activations and campaigns, not just overseeing them but comfortable being close to the detail.
• Working knowledge of affiliate networks and tracking platforms (e.g. Awin, Rakuten Advertising, Partnerize, Impact, CJ) and the wider creator-commerce landscape.
• Comfortable using AI and automation tools to optimise campaigns, spend and content at scale, and keen to test new tools as the affiliate/AI-commerce landscape evolves.
• Strong commercial and negotiation skills, with experience managing partner and network relationships.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to work confidently across teams and influence senior stakeholders.

Desirable

• Experience in beauty, fashion or a related lifestyle retail category.
• Experience scaling a channel or building out a partner programme from a smaller base.
• Familiarity with media mix modelling (MMM), attribution or incrementality methodologies and testing frameworks.
• Experience using partnerships or affiliate activity to support brand awareness and upper-funnel objectives, alongside performance/direct-response activity.
• Line management or mentoring experience.

You are

• Analytical and commercially minded, with genuine curiosity about what the numbers are telling you.
• Organised and comfortable owning a budget with real accountability for the numbers.
• A doer as well as a strategist, happy to plan the activation and then get it live.
• A natural collaborator who builds trust quickly with partners and colleagues across the wider business.
  

   

This role is based in our London office, with a minimum of three days a week on site. You'll collaborate with colleagues in our Manchester office as needed, with occasional travel between sites.

What’s in it for me? 

Career Development 

• Access bespoke development programmes that have been designed and developed by our in-house L&D team. 

• Continued development through our upskilling programme that is delivered in partnership with an industry-leading training provider. 

Enhanced Leave 

• 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays. 

• Don’t want to work on your birthday? We don’t either! Enjoy your day off on us! 

• Enhanced maternity and paternity pay, depending on length of service.  

• Up to 10 days compassionate leave. 

• Buy back up to 3 days each year. 

• Unlock 2 days volunteer leave after 12-months. 

Wellbeing Support 

• Access to virtual appointments with our in-house GP.
   
• Access our 247 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) which is provided by Bupa.  

Other Perks 

• Save up to 12% on the cost of personal tech through our salary sacrifice scheme.  

• Up to 50% staff discount on THG brands. 
   
• Know someone who would be perfect for THG? Refer them and get up to £1000 when they pass their probation. 

• Anniversary gifts when you hit 5 and 10 years of service.