Business Development & Communications Associate

Business Development & Communications Associate

Amsterdam | 40 hours (0.8 FTE possible) | €40,306.08 annual gross salary | 1-year contract (with view to extend)

Laterite is rebuilding how we win work — and how we tell our story.

Laterite is changing the way we approach business development and storytelling. In 2026, we are updating our Business Development & Communications (BDC) function to move away from administrative, coordination-heavy workflows. We want to focus instead on sharper professional judgment, better market positioning, and the smart use of AI.

Our goal is simple: clearer proposals, more human communications, and more intentional events. This role is at the center of that transition. We aren't looking for someone to simply "manage content": we need a colleague who will help define Laterite's public profile.

You will work with the BDC Manager to turn complex research and data into communication that is confident, easy to follow, and practical. You’ll ensure our work doesn't just meet a technical bar but actually connects with our audience. If you enjoy taking the lead on problems, organizing complex information, and helping technical teams speak with more clarity, this role is for you.

Who We Are

Laterite is a data, research and analytics firm working on complex development challenges.

We partner with universities, global think tanks, international NGOs, multilateral donors, and government ministries. Our clients include the World Bank, USAID, TechnoServe, the Mastercard Foundation, and others.

We operate across the Netherlands, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Peru. Our team includes 90+ full-time staff and more than 2,000 enumerators.

We believe that meaningful impact requires being on the ground, building local teams, and establishing long-term trust. Our office culture is collaborative and gives people autonomy to grow.

The Environment You’re Stepping Into

You will join a three-person BDC team in our 14-person Amsterdam office. We aren't a massive, multi-layered department; we are a small team with significant influence that sits close to leadership. We work directly with research managers and partners and are involved whenever major positioning decisions are made. The environment is direct and low on bureaucracy, but high on individual accountability. You won’t be micromanaged, but you will be expected to think critically and improve the systems you work with. This role is about exercising judgment, not just ticking off a checklist.

What You’ll Be Responsible For

1. Shaping Laterite’s Voice

We do technically rigorous work, but we don’t want our communications to read like compliance documents. Your role is to help us sound like who we are: rigorous, thoughtful, grounded, but accessible.

You will lead the creation of newsletters, social media content, short narratives, and case studies. More importantly, you will apply editorial judgment. You’ll decide what to emphasize, what to cut, and how to frame our work in ways that make sense beyond our immediate technical circle.

You will also help test and improve our internal communications handbook through real projects, refining it over time.

2. Strengthening Proposals and Positioning

Proposals are strategic documents, not just paperwork. You’ll work with technical leads on high-stakes bids to help structure their arguments, fix the narrative flow, and improve visual clarity. During busy submission periods, you’ll be the person who brings structure to a draft and turns it into a persuasive document. Over time, our research leads should seek you out early because they see the value in your perspective. You will become a "critical friend" to our technical teams.

3. Making Outreach and Events Intentional

We don't want to attend conferences just to be there. Before an event, you’ll help teams think through who we want to speak to and what we want them to take away. During the event, you’ll capture content we can use later, and afterward, you’ll help turn those conversations into actual follow-up. We care about the quality of our engagement, not just the attendance numbers.

4. Building Systems That Scale

We care about quality, but we don't believe in heavy processes. You will help improve our templates and workflows so that our work gets better without becoming harder to produce. You’ll experiment with AI tools while keeping human oversight at the center. We expect you to take the lead on specific initiatives from start to finish. This is a role for a builder.

Requirements

What You Bring

You bring 3–5 years of professional experience in communications and/or business development, ideally in roles requiring structured thinking, strong writing, and comfort working under deadline pressure. You understand how donor-funded projects operate and what high-quality proposals and reports require.

You have an excellent command of English, written and verbal. You can edit dense technical material for clarity and structure, rewrite sections when needed, and adapt tone depending on the audience. You are comfortable refining executive summaries, methodology sections, and ensuring documents read as a coherent narrative rather than stitched-together inputs.

You are visually confident. Canva proficiency is essential. You can build clean slide decks, social graphics, and short publications with strong layout and hierarchy. Experience with Adobe InDesign or Illustrator is a plus.

You are practically fluent in AI tools such as ChatGPT (or similar), using them to structure drafts, improve workflows, summarize complex content, and generate options, while keeping human judgment central.

You are comfortable working across digital platforms, including LinkedIn and CMS platforms such as WordPress or Squarespace. Experience with Mailchimp or similar email tools is expected.

You are organized and comfortable using tools like Slack, Confluence, Asana, Notion, and shared document platforms to manage multiple parallel deadlines without losing attention to detail.

You are based in (or willing to relocate to) Amsterdam and have the existing right to work in the EU.

Most importantly, you operate well in a high-trust environment. You take ownership, exercise judgment, and know when to push for stronger framing, when precision matters more than persuasion.

What success looks like in 6 months

Six months in, we will know this partnership is working if:

• Our external communication feels measurably sharper: — less like reporting, more like storytelling.
• Technical teams seek your input early because they value your ability to structure and strengthen their thinking.
• At least two core workflows feel lighter and more effective than before.
• You are confidently managing the day-to-day flow of communications without the BDC Manager acting as a bottleneck.
• An event or campaign has led to visible engagement or follow-up that we can point to.

We don’t expect you to transform everything overnight. We do expect ownership, judgment, and progress.

Benefits

What’s in it for you?

You will work directly with the BDC Manager and have meaningful influence over the direction of the function. You will join at a rebuilding moment — which means room to shape how things are done.

The salary range for this role will start at €40,306.08 gross per year, depending on experience and alignment with our internal pay matrix.

We offer a flexible working environment, including remote work options and up to six weeks per year working from another location.

You will have access to an annual learning budget of up to $1,000 and 10 days per year dedicated to professional development.

This is a one-year contract (40 hours per week, with 0.8 FTE possible), with a view to extension.