VP, Corporate Development Full Time NEW

Kanbrick is a purpose-driven, long-term investment partner to owner-, family-, and founder-led businesses. We work hands-on with our companies to unlock their full potential through strong operations and people leadership, thinking in decades, not quarters.

The Kanbrick Business System (KBS) is our transformative approach to building long-term value by aligning people, process, and culture to strategy. The KBS team works hands-on across our partner companies to implement it. This role is based in Charlotte NC, sits on the KBS team and partners closely with our Investing team.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Our partner companies are active acquirers, and as the portfolio has grown, ensuring the right add-on opportunities are identified, evaluated, and executed well has become a core part of how we create value alongside them. We are creating a dedicated role to build that capability across our partner companies.

This is a senior, high-ownership role working directly with CEOs, embedded in how companies grow, with the opportunity to shape what a best-in-class add-on M&A function looks like across a portfolio of family- and founder-led businesses.

What You’ll Own

This role operates differently across three company contexts, and that flexibility is the job:

• At high-volume acquirers: set M&A infrastructure, run monthly pipeline reviews, coach company executives, and quarterback transformational deals, transitioning to oversight as internal capability grows
• At moderate-M&A companies: stay hands-on as the day-to-day deal partner to the CEO: owning or co-owning financial models, managing deal timelines, and serving as the primary point of contact for advisors and counterparties
• At partner companies: build from scratch. Define the acquisition strategy, create market maps and sourcing playbooks, establish the pipeline cadence, and determine what steady-state M&A looks like for that business
• Across all contexts, examples of activities you may be accountable for:
• M&A pipeline governance: monthly review cadence, pipeline quality, and overall health of corp dev execution at each company
• Deal quarterbacking where needed: LOI through close, coordinating across the operating company leadership team, Kanbrick investing team and KBS
• Judgment: serving as first line of defense on add-on quality and strategic fit
• CEO and executive team coaching and equipping: building M&A capability in partner company leaders over time
• Sourcing infrastructure: market maps, broker relationships, target lists, outbound campaigns

What You’re Not Responsible For

This role has clear edges. You own the recommendation, not the investment decision; that sits with the Board and the operating company executive team. Capital structure and cap table decisions are theirs. Integration planning and execution lives with KBS; your job is ensuring a clean handoff of deal context, not owning what comes after close. New platform deal sourcing is the investing team’s domain, though you’ll collaborate on commercial diligence when it’s relevant.

Requirements

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

We are hiring for a “Builder-Coach”; someone who can execute deals at under-resourced companies, coach and equip executives at mature ones, and build M&A infrastructure from scratch at new ones. We are not looking for someone who has only executed transactions from an investor seat. The strongest candidates will have experience sitting within an operating company, where the success of a deal is measured by how it performs post-close.

Requirements:

• Deal credibility: You have personally owned deal processes end-to-end, not just coordinated them: you’ve built the financial modeling, worked the diligence, structured the LOI and managed the close. Partner company CEOs need to trust that you’ve done deals with real accountability
• Coaching instinct: You get energy from making others better. You default to equipping a CEO and their teams rather than taking over. Patient, high-EQ, comfortable influencing without authority. You measure success by how capable the teams become over time, not by how many deals you personally drive
• Process builder: You have built M&A infrastructure from scratch before. Acquisition strategy, market maps, sourcing playbooks, pipeline tracking, diligence checklists. You know what “good” looks like because you’ve designed it

Helpful, but not essential:

Sourcing network: Broker relationships and conference-circuit presence help, but a great candidate without a deep existing network can build one. We have market maps, portfolio CEO networks, and outbound infrastructure to support this.

Background:

• VP-level in scope, with experience owning M&A processes end-to-end and influencing senior executives. We prioritize depth of ownership and judgment over specific tenure or years of experience requirements
• Backgrounds that tend to translate well include: corporate development at a PE-backed platform company with an active acquisition strategy, operating roles where M&A was a meaningful part of the role, or a PE operating partner with hands-on deal experience. What matters most is what you’ve built and how you’ve worked
• This role could be ideally suited for you if you’ve built your career in M&A and see it as a lever for building enduring businesses, while getting energy from equipping leaders and creating systems that last beyond any single transaction

Our partner companies are growing through organic performance and through acquisitions, and the quality of that inorganic work matters. You’ll have direct relationships with CEOs from day one, a genuine mandate to build something with staying power, and close collaboration with a Kanbrick investing team that knows how to do deals and wants a dedicated operating partner to extend that capability into the companies themselves.

Learn more about us at www.kanbrick.com/careers.

Benefits

What We Offer

• A collaborative, high-performing team culture.
• Opportunities to contribute meaningfully to the success of a growing investment partnership.
• Exposure to challenging and rewarding work
• Competitive salary and benefits package.

At Kanbrick, you will have the opportunity to work alongside leaders who are transforming the industry in an environment that is innovative, fast-paced, and collaborative. You will be an integral part of the team, helping drive the company’s success and growth while also having room to develop and grow professionally. If you’re excited to partner with leaders, contribute meaningfully to building great businesses, and operate in an environment where high expectations are matched with support and collaboration, we’d love to hear from you. careers@kanbrick.com