Director of Federal Business Development

At Elroy Air, we build autonomous vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) cargo aircraft systems to change the way the world moves goods. Transporting cargo by air is faster and more efficient than by land or sea, but before recent technological and regulatory developments, it was prohibitively expensive. Today, we’re able to expand middle-mile logistics possibilities across multiple sectors. The commercial express shipping industry spends $140B annually on the middle-mile and needs faster, better solutions - while the armed forces are increasingly prioritizing unmanned aerial cargo delivery systems.
These partners and customers are already responding enthusiastically to the technologies we are pioneering. As we develop and deploy these systems, we are looking for people like you: motivated collaborators, excited by our mission and by the rare opportunity to improve how logistics works around the world. You will play an important role in establishing Elroy Air as the industry standard in this massive market.
Diverse perspectives at all levels are critical to innovation and employee development. We encourage our team to bring their whole selves to Elroy. This includes but is not limited to gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender expression, religion, age, ability, parenthood status, veteran status, educational background, citizenship status, or any combination of these characteristics.
As a Director of Federal Business Development on the Business Development and Strategy team, you will play a vital role leading strategic capture pursuits and ensuring customer success for our federal customers. This is a hands-on, strategic role overseeing the development and implementation of programs to build new business and sales wins, focused on aviation and logistics defense customers.
You will be responsible for Identifying and responding to proposals, closing new contracts, building defense funding capture campaigns, and supporting existing contracts.  You will work with company leadership and the strategy team to provide support for conferences and trade shows as a public-facing representative of Elroy Air.  
This is a remote, full-time, exempt role which will require >50% travel, both domestically and internationally, to Washington DC and other customer locations, as well as to our South San Francisco headquarters. 

What You’ll Own:

• Identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing new federal contract opportunities in collaboration with the Business Development and Strategy team, as well as company leadership
• Initiating communication, meetings, briefings, establishing/growing relationships with both new and existing federal customers and stakeholders
• Creating, refining, and presenting proposals, white-paper responses, presentations, etc.
• Keeping assets (images, videos, presentations, etc.) organized and relevant as development of our product continues and matures
• Be the primary point of contact for both existing and future federal contracts; running regular stakeholder meetings, submitting deliverables, and winning expansions to existing contract scope

Our Ideal Candidate:

• Bachelor’s degree in a business, marketing, or technology related concentration
• 7+ years of business development or other relevant experience within the DoD 
• Demonstrable success in Federal Business Development including acquisitions, engagement, planning, proposal management, monitoring, and reporting on these activities
• Direct experience securing R&D funding and creating strategies that have led to a program of record
• Experience selling hardware systems (drones, robotics, or other frontier technology) into the government
• Established and successful reputation in the industry, with strong existing customer and industry relationships
• Strong leadership, communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills to help establish and maintain rapport with both internal and external senior executives and stakeholders
• Comfortable interfacing directly with US Government stakeholders and speaking publicly on behalf of the company
• Strong writing and presentation/deck creation skills, and a track record of successfully preparing contract proposals
• The ability to translate complex analysis and product features into simple customer-ready slides
• The ability to translate customer insight into product feature requests
• The ability to comfortably work under pressure and deal with ambiguity
• You are entrepreneurial, resourceful, and kind

Bonus Points for:

• An aptitude for winning contract awards early  in the product maturity cycle
• You have prior experience in Aviation, Aerospace & Defense, or Military Service 
• You have experience working in an engineering or scientific R&D organization

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