Vice President, Global Sales

Your next role as a Miracle Maker

Maravai LifeSciences is seeking a #MiracleMaker to join our commercial team as a Vice President, Global Sales. The Vice President, Global Sales will own Cygnus’ global sales strategy and lead the organization responsible for profitable revenue growth. This executive will build on an established reputation for quality while strengthening customer acquisition, strategic account expansion and competitive execution.

As a member of the Cygnus leadership team, the VP will help shape the business’ growth agenda, establish commercial priorities and direct resources toward the strongest opportunities. This role leads Sales and distributor relationships and works closely with Marketing, R&D, and Operations to align commercial plans with customer needs and business capabilities.

This is a hands-on executive role. Success requires the ability to set direction, build organizational capability and personally advance strategic customer relationships, major negotiations, and important competitive opportunities.

How you will make an impact:

Global sales strategy and execution

• Develop a multi-year-growth roadmap that identifies market opportunities, competitive threats, channel requirements and investment priorities. Translate the roadmap into clear execution plans and resource decisions.
• Serve as a member of the Cygnus leadership team, bringing customer and market insight to business planning, portfolio priorities and operating decisions. Present sales performance, risks and recommendations to the General Manager and senior leadership.

Customer growth and competitive positioning

• Lead Sales strategy and execution. Establish account segmentation, coverage and ownership, and personally engage in strategic customer discussions, competitive opportunities and major negotiations.
• Expand enterprise pharma and biotech relationships across sites, functions and development programs. Build senior customer relationships while ensuring strong engagement with analytical development, quality control, process development and procurement stakeholders.
• Establish a repeatable approach to new customer acquisition, including small and midsize biopharma. Develop CDMO relationships that create access to new programs and support early adoption of Cygnus assays and related services.
• Partner with Marketing and scientific leaders to translate Cygnus’ gold-standard position into a compelling, evidence-based commercial approach. Equip sellers and distributors to demonstrate assay performance, reliability, technical support and total workflow value.
• Shape and implement pricing and negotiation strategies with the General Manager and Finance. Establish disciplined discounting and deal review practices within approved authority, balancing growth, customer value and margin.

Distribution

• Own distributor strategy, including market coverage, partner selection, development and performance. Recommend and implement partner additions or changes within approved authority.
• Establish joint business plans, growth targets, training and regular performance reviews. Improve visibility into end-customer demand, pipeline and inventory.
• Develop regional plans that reflect any local market conditions, including EMEA growth and China distributor and CDMO opportunities. Build strategic customer relationships alongside distributors while maintaining clear channel responsibilities.

Sales organization and execution

• Design and develop a sales organization and process suited to Cygnus’ growth priorities. Recruit, coach and retain talent, strengthen leadership capability and build succession plans for critical roles.
• Establish clear performance expectations and work with HR and Finance to align commercial incentives with revenue growth, margin and strategic priorities.
• Lead a consistent sales operating cadence covering pipeline quality, opportunity qualification, forecasting, account performance and distributor results. Use CRM data and win/loss analysis to improve execution and respond to competitive threats.
• Distinguish underlying demand, volume and new business growth from pricing effects. Use these insights to assess sales performance and guide decisions.
• Partner with Marketing on positioning, demand generation, sales tools and launches. Bring customer insight to R&D and Technical Services to inform opportunities for new products, custom assays and related services.
• Align customer commitments with Operations and technical teams so that capacity, service and product availability support a dependable customer experience.
• Perform other functions and duties as required

The skills and experience that you will bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in life sciences, business or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience. An advanced scientific or business degree is preferred.
• 15 + years of progressive sales experience in life science tools, bioprocessing, analytical testing or a closely related market, including substantial leadership experience with revenue, budget and organizational accountability.
• Demonstrated success developing and executing strategies that deliver sustained growth in competitive, technically complex markets.
• A record of winning new business, expanding strategic accounts, defending premium value and leading complex negotiations with sophisticated biopharma customers.
• Experience leading both direct sales and distributors, including market prioritization, partner selection, joint planning and performance improvement. Experience in EMEA and Asia, particularly China, is valuable.
• Evidence of building organizations, developing leaders and aligning structure, talent, incentives and investment with business priorities.
• Strong financial and commercial judgment, including pricing, margin management, forecasting, budget ownership and resource allocation.
• Working knowledge of biologics development and manufacturing and the purchasing needs of analytical development and quality control teams. Experience with host cell protein assays, impurity analytics or related reagents and services is strongly preferred.
• Ability to lead change in an established technical organization and influence decisions across scientific, operational and commercial functions.
• Executive presence and communication skills to build trust with senior customers, distributors and internal leaders, combined with a willingness to remain directly involved in sales execution.
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally to support customers, distributors and the team.

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