Job Title:       

Business Development Executive (Defence and Security)

Department:  

Business Development 

Reports to:   

Senior Business Development Manager (Defence and Security)

 The Challenge:

 The Catapult has organised itself into Mission areas: Beyond Earth, Connected Earth and Autonomous Earth, and Sustainable Earth. Each Mission is tasked with developing a strategic portfolio of Interventions through which projects and services can be designed and delivered to achieve market impact. To align each Mission to the Market, the Catapult has established four strategic accounts as the focal point for engaging customers across four discrete domains: Defence and Security, Public Sector, Private Sector, and Space Sector. 

 The Defence and Security Senior Business Executive’s role will be to work with the Catapult’s Director of Defence and Security to position the Catapult as a neutral trusted entity and technically capable customer friend and convenor to secure contracts for high-impact projects that demonstrate, develop, and commercialise space sector supply-chain capability for the Defence and Security sector, enabling UK industry to grow and prosper in this domain. You will develop and implement the Account Sales plan in accordance with the Account Strategy to achieve annual sales targets for order intake, sales revenue and margin retention. They will also manage and develop business development resources as required to deliver the account sales plan.  

As Business Development Executive(Defence and Security), you will:

Promote Space Industry capability – Work with the Defence Strategic account team to Identify opportunities for the Space industry to raise the visibility of their products and services across the Account Domain.

Business Development- Work with the Defence Strategic account team to support the building of customer focused BD with technical support and provide support for the Account’s sales process.

Sales Management - Work with the Defence Strategic account team Continuously review the Account sales plan with internal and external stakeholders to ensure information is accurately recorded within the Catapult’s internal Sales reporting system. Qualify prospects and update sales forecasts with the latest market intelligence.

 Market Research - In collaboration with the CEA function, Work with the Defence Strategic account team to conduct research to identify potential customers, assess market trends, and growth opportunities. Analyse industry data and competitor strategies to inform the Account sales plan.

 You will also:

• With particular emphasis on Civil Defence, build strong relationships with key D&S suppliers and technology providers.

• Engage with industry to understand market and end user needs, providing key insights to all internal teams to ensure the commercial growth of the UK Space Sector.

• Maintain an understanding of key policy documents pertaining to Defence and Security and ensure that the Catapult acts a gateway to building policy into practice

• Work closely with colleagues across bidding, delivery, finance, impact and evaluation, procurement, and legal teams to deliver high quality interventions.

• Work with Mission and Intervention leads to ensure customer insights and requirements are being fed back into the organisation, Catapult partners and wider industrial space community.

• Identify and facilitate opportunities for commercialisation within the Strategic Account sales plan and work with internal stakeholders to qualify and support potential spin-out or Alliance opportunities that benefit the Strategic Account. 

• Understand and sell the Catapult’s investible propositions to customers, identifying opportunities to upsell and feedback to internal stakeholders any revisions / improvements required for success.

 We expect that you will have the following skills and experience:

• Experience of selling innovation concepts, and the benefits of co-creating new products / services / solutions in an innovation environment. 

• Experience of working within the Military and or Civil Defence and Security ecosystem in a sales or account management role.

• Knowledge of key defence technology capabilities. For example, Satellite Communications, Geospatial Intelligence or Autonomous Vehicles.

• Ability to build and sustain Customer and stakeholder relationships.

• Ability to prepare persuasive proposals, presentations, and pitches to secure new business opportunities. Ability to customise proposals to address customer needs and effectively showcase the Catapult’s strengths.

• Track-record of forming networks with partners and staff at all levels.

• Lead generation from initial Customer engagement, opportunity identification, and securing scalable, complex sales.

• Demonstrated experience in shaping commercial opportunities/sales. 

• A customer-focused approach that ensures the Catapult’s reputation as a neutral trusted entity is demonstrated and maintained, supporting customer success and advocacy for future opportunities. 

Ways of Working

We are a learning organisation where our ways of working are underpinned by coaching and feedback, fostering adult to adult conversations. Innovation is at the heart of everything that we do, therefore being highly adaptive and agile with a GROWTH mindset will ensure your success at the Catapult. We expect our people to be Pioneering, Agile, Collaborative and Entrepreneurial, working at PACE.

 How we work….

We strive to create a high trust, high performance and inclusive environment that enables team members to bring their whole selves to work – this helps to create the foundations of an innovation culture. Our shared values are critical to this:

• We care - for our people, our partners, and our planet

• We connect - and engage with people and ideas

• We learn - and grow, as people and as an industry

Underpinning this is our belief in great teams, our combined efforts will always deliver outcomes beyond that of anyone providing we are honest through debate, experiment and reflect, and create shared resolutions in support of our purpose. Live these values, work to our principles, take ownership to deliver, and we are certain you will thrive with us.

This job description set outs the skills and experience we think are needed to be able to perform in this job. However, if you believe you can deliver in this role then we want to hear from you.

Important notice for applicants: We use tools to detect plagiarism and the use of AI or chatbots for applicant answers. If plagiarism, AI use (such as ChatGPT) or similar software are found to have been used in your application you will not be considered for this or future roles within the Satellite Applications Catapult.

At Satellite Applications Catapult, we're committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workforce. We welcome candidates from all corners of the globe, but due to legal and logistical considerations, we want to be transparent about the potential visa-related challenges that could arise. Our ability to offer sponsorship will depend on the level of interest for our roles and salary level.

If you need any additional support during the application process, please do reach out and connect. We also invite you to share feedback via Applied.