Business Development Lead - Radio Communications, Radar & Fire-Control Systems

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.

Communications and radar are the areas where we are building real depth – resilient tactical networks, software-defined and commercial-silicon radios, low-cost sensing radar for counter-UAS and platform protection, and the companies that make them. The companies we buy in this space are usually excellent at what they build and under-invested in selling it: a few long-standing customers, a reputation inside a narrow circle, and no one whose job it is to find the next programme. The Business Development Lead for Radio Communications, Radar and Fire-Control Systems changes that. You'll own top-line growth for our portfolio companies in this domain: 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, signals and air-defence communities, primes and system 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 – tactical-communications and air-defence programmes, platform integrations, border and critical-infrastructure protection, export markets – 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, signals and air-defence users, primes, system 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, demonstration, 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 trials, with the discretion the sector requires.
• Shape the offer. Take what you hear from customers back into product, roadmap, pricing and positioning decisions with the company's leadership; make sure what is sold can be built and fielded.
• Run proposals and trials. Lead or coordinate responses to RFIs, RFPs and framework tenders, and the customer demonstrations and field trials that decide them – including the teaming, pricing and compliance work behind them.
• Work the partner channel. Build teaming, integration and distribution arrangements with primes, platform makers 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.

Requirements

What you'll bring

• A degree in engineering, business, economics, international relations or a closely related discipline; an electrical or communications engineering degree is a plus.
• 5+ years in business development, sales or capture management in defence communications, radar, electronic warfare or a closely adjacent field, selling into European ministries, procurement agencies, armed forces, primes or system integrators.
• 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, spectrum and export control – and an existing network inside it.
• Enough technical fluency to discuss radios, networks and radar credibly with engineers and military users – waveforms, spectrum, jam resistance, detection performance, integration – and to 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, trials, 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 in a signals, air-defence or electronic-warfare role, 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 radios, networks, radar or EW sub-systems 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, or with counter-UAS and border-security buyers outside the traditional defence channel.
• Experience in a PE-backed or acquisitive group where you grew the revenue of a newly acquired company.
• Familiarity with the commercial-silicon and 5G ecosystem as it enters defence, and with the questions customers ask about it.
• Time in a start-up or small team where you did whatever the business needed.
• Clearance in at least one of our operating countries.