Business Development Lead - Aerospace and Defence

About the role

Onodrim is building Europe's largest defence and industrial platform. We acquire specialist manufacturers in critical defence and dual-use supply chains, then invest behind their growth with capital, technology and operating know-how.

The companies we buy are usually excellent at what they make and under-invested in selling it. They have a handful of long-standing customers, a reputation inside a narrow circle, but no clear focus on finding the next programme. The Business Development Lead for Aerospace and Defence changes that. You'll own top-line growth for our portfolio companies in aerospace and defence, starting with the acquisitions we have already made in that space: work out where the demand is, get in front of the people who control it, and bring back signed business.

This is a sales role, and a self-directed one. You'll come with your own view on how to grow the business and the drive to go and test it – with ministries and procurement agencies, armed forces, primes and tier-one integrators, and the partners who can open doors. You'll represent Onodrim and its companies externally, at a level where what you say carries weight, and you'll be measured on what you close.

What you'll do

• Build the growth plan. For each portfolio company in your area, work out where the addressable demand is – programmes, platforms, customers, geographies – and write a plan with targets, priorities and a pipeline to get there.
• Open doors. Build and work relationships with ministries of defence, procurement agencies, armed-forces users, primes, tier-one integrators and partners across Europe; get the company into the conversations and tenders it is currently missing.
• Own the pipeline. Qualify opportunities hard, run them through the sales cycle – capture plan, proposal, negotiation, contract – and keep an honest, current forecast.
• Close. Bring in signed business and be accountable for bookings against the plan.
• Represent the company. Speak for Onodrim and its portfolio companies at conferences, industry bodies, customer briefings and in the press where appropriate, with the discretion the sector requires.
• Shape the offer. Take what you hear from customers back into product, pricing and positioning decisions with the company's leadership and our operators; make sure what is sold can be delivered.
• Run proposals. Lead or coordinate responses to RFIs, RFPs and framework tenders, including the teaming, pricing and compliance work behind them.
• Work the partner channel. Build teaming and distribution arrangements with primes and complementary suppliers where they get us to customers faster than going direct.
• Inform what we buy next. Feed market, customer and competitor intelligence to the deal team and the leadership: where demand is going, which capabilities customers are missing, which companies they wish existed.
• Build the function. Put the basics in place – CRM, pipeline reviews, capture process – at companies that have never had them, and help their own teams sell.

What you'll bring

• A degree in engineering, business, economics, international relations or a closely related discipline; a technical degree is a plus.
• 5+ years in business development, consulting, sales or capture management in aerospace and defence, selling products to defence primes, European governments, procurement agencies and armed forces.
• A track record of closed business you can walk through: what you sold, to whom, for how much, and what you did to win it.
• Working knowledge of how the sector buys – programme and budget cycles, primes and supplier tiers, framework contracts, offsets, qualification, export control – and an existing network inside it.
• Enough technical fluency to understand what a manufacturer's product does, explain it credibly and know when to bring an engineer.
• Self-direction: you have built a pipeline from nothing, set your own targets and hit them without a sales operations team behind you.
• Excellent communication in English, written and spoken – in a proposal, in a boardroom, on a stage – and the judgement to know what not to say.
• Comfort working alongside owner-managers and engineers at small industrial companies, and the ability to bring them with you.
• Willingness to travel extensively across Europe to customers, partners, conferences and portfolio companies.
• Right to work in the UK, Switzerland or the EU, and eligibility for a national security clearance in at least one of our operating countries.

Nice to have

• We operate our business in English; knowledge of a European language other than English is beneficial.
• Military service, or time inside a ministry of defence or procurement agency, that gives you first-hand understanding of the customer.
• An existing national security clearance.
• Experience selling components, sub-systems or manufacturing capacity into primes and platform programmes – the supplier side, not only the system side.
• Experience with NATO, NSPA, EDA or EU-funded defence programmes and their procurement routes.
• Experience in a PE-backed or acquisitive group where you grew the revenue of a newly acquired company.
• Familiarity with aerospace quality and certification frameworks (AS9100, EASA/EMAR) as they affect what customers will buy.
• Time in a start-up or small team where you did whatever the business needed.
• Clearance in at least one of our operating countries.