Business Development Lead - Aerospace and Defence

About the role

Onodrim builds Europe's largest defence and industrial platform by acquiring specialist manufacturers in critical defence and dual-use supply chains and investing behind their growth. The Business Development Lead for Aerospace and Defence owns top-line growth for the portfolio companies in that space, starting with the acquisitions already made. It is a self-directed sales role, representing Onodrim and its companies externally to ministries, procurement agencies, armed forces, primes and tier-one integrators, and being measured on what is closed.

Key responsibilities

• Build a growth plan for each portfolio company: addressable demand, programmes, platforms, customers and geographies, with targets, priorities and a pipeline.
• Open doors by building relationships with ministries of defence, procurement agencies, armed forces, primes and tier-one integrators across Europe, getting the company into conversations and tenders it misses.
• Qualify opportunities, run them through the sales cycle and keep an accurate forecast.
• Bring in signed business and be accountable for bookings against the plan.
• Represent the company at conferences, industry bodies, customer briefings and in the press, with the discretion the sector requires.
• Shape the offer by feeding customer feedback back to leadership and operators on product, pricing and positioning.
• Lead or coordinate responses to RFIs, RFPs and framework tenders, including teaming, pricing and compliance work.
• Build teaming and distribution arrangements with primes and complementary suppliers.
• Feed market, customer and competitor intelligence to the deal team and leadership.
• Set up the basics (CRM, pipeline reviews, capture process) at companies that have never had them, and help their own teams sell.

Required profile

• 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 to defence primes, European governments, procurement agencies and armed forces.
• Track record of closed business with details of what was sold, to whom and for how much.
• Working knowledge of how the sector buys: programme and budget cycles, primes and supplier tiers, framework contracts, offsets, qualification and export control, with an existing network.
• Enough technical fluency to understand and explain a manufacturer's product and know when to bring an engineer.
• Self-directed, able to build a pipeline from nothing and set your own targets without a sales operations team.
• Excellent written and spoken English, with judgement about what not to say.
• Comfort working alongside owner-managers and engineers at small industrial companies.
• Willingness to travel extensively across Europe.
• Right to work in the UK, Switzerland or the EU, and eligibility for a national security clearance in at least one operating country.

Nice to have

• Military service or experience in a ministry of defence or procurement agency.
• An existing national security clearance.
• Experience selling components, sub-systems or manufacturing capacity to primes and platform programmes.
• Experience with NATO, NSPA, EDA or EU-funded defence programmes.
• Experience growing the revenue of a newly acquired company in a PE-backed or acquisitive group.
• Familiarity with AS9100, EASA/EMAR and other aerospace quality and certification frameworks.
• Time in a start-up or small team doing whatever the business needed.