Job Description

The Director of Business Development is a multifaceted role, responsible for maintaining industry awareness, generating leads, managing customer relationships and obtaining requests for proposals.  The ideal candidate will possess a robust network of professional connections within the space industry. This person will collaborate with executives to execute SEAKR’s business development strategy through pursuit of high win probability opportunities.  This person is also responsible for the identification of new business opportunities and crafting a capture strategy for executive management bid/no-bid decisions. To strategically position the company for securing future business opportunities, the Director is expected to provide clear input on future product offering needs to the IRAD planning and budgeting process.  The ideal candidate will demonstrate expertise in sales, negotiations, finance, and growth strategies, while embodying an entrepreneurial mindset. This is a full-time exempt position, that will be “the face of the company”, working independently with minimal oversight from executive management, and performance will be assessed based on the results achieved.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities: 

Strategic Planning: Develop and execute business development strategies to drive growth and achieve company objectives. Collaborate with executives to development, articulate, and execute a business development strategy with short, mid, and long-term goals, by providing input from industry, market, and competitive analysis, customer needs assessments, customer feedback, product definition feedback, and future mission requirements.

Sales and Revenue Growth: Drive sales initiatives and achieve revenue targets through effective business development strategies. Coordinate with executives to define and execute business development strategies to grow product segment market share and profitability, through market opportunity evaluation and segmentation, value proposition development, product positioning, pricing strategy, branding and channel strategy, and communications strategy development. 

Client Relationships: Establish and maintain strong relationships with key clients, including government agencies, defense contractors, and commercial aerospace companies. Establish and nurture these customer relationships to understand their current and future needs and promote alignment of our current and future capabilities to meet these needs.

Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with leadership team, engineering, business capture, and product development teams to align business development efforts with company goals. Align with capture team in to define technical, strategic, and business insight for RFI, ROM, whitepaper, and proposal responses.

Market Analysis: Identify and analyze market trends, customer needs, and competitive landscape to uncover new business opportunities. Supervise marketing execution which includes content for SEAKR’s web site, product & marketing literature, trade show presence, trade journals articles, white papers, press releases, presentations, and datasheets. Represent the company at industry events, conferences, and trade shows to promote products and services.

Skills: Strong analytical, negotiation, and communication skills. Ability to manage multiple projects and work under pressure. The ideal candidate will also be proficient in all areas of Capture Management including: managing a capture team, contributing to technical volumes, developing program schedules, contributing to cost volumes, and pricing.

Travel: Must be available to travel for business 30% - 50% of the time.

Security Clearance:  The candidate will either have TS/SCI with polygraph clearance or be capable of obtaining.   

Supervisory Duties:

• Direct reports include the members of the Business Development team

Qualifications

Education or Formal Training 

• The ideal candidate will have a technical background and an Engineering Bachelor’s degree with emphasis in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, or the equivalent combination of training and experience.
• The ideal candidate will have a Master’s degree in the field of engineering management or program management or an MBA.

Experience 

• Desired experience is at least 15 years of technical business development, with some proven experience in the Aerospace/Space markets.