Senior Sales Director

For over 65 years, Columbia Helicopters has been a trusted provider of heavy-lift helicopter services. We create new aircraft, fly heavy-lift helicopters around the world, and provide maintenance support to ensure you are mission-ready for critical operations.  If you are passionate about aviation, join our Columbia Family!

The Senior Sales Director - Firefighting Segment is responsible for supporting the development, coordination, and execution of Columbia Helicopters' firefighting sales strategy. This position will partner closely with the Vice President, Sales, the Chief Executive Officer, senior leadership, and cross-functional teams to identify, pursue, and capture qualified firefighting opportunities that support profitable aircraft utilization and long-term segment growth.

The position serves as a senior external-facing representative for Columbia within the firefighting market, including federal, state, provincial, commercial, and international firefighting organizations. The role will help present Columbia's values, solutions, aircraft capabilities, and operational credibility to senior-level customers and partners while supporting the company's broader strategic growth plans for the Firefighting Segment.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

• Partners with the Vice President, Sales, CEO, and senior leadership to develop and execute the Firefighting Segment sales strategy.

• Act as a senior representative and external face of Columbia Helicopters to firefighting customers, agencies, industry groups, prime contractors, strategic partners, and international organizations.

• Builds and maintains relationships with federal, state, provincial, municipal, commercial, and international firefighting decision makers.

• Identifies, qualifies, and develops new firefighting opportunities with the potential to become multi-year contracts or strategic growth programs.

• Supports capture strategy, customer engagement plans, competitive positioning, proposal development, pricing discussions, and contract pursuit activity.

• Works with senior leadership and subject matter experts to present Columbia's capabilities, values, operating experience, safety culture, aircraft performance, and customer solutions.

• Coordinates with Operations, Flight Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Finance, Contracts, Marketing, and executive leadership to align customer requirements with Columbia's operating capabilities.

• Provides market feedback and customer requirements to support aircraft configuration, mission equipment, tanking capability, NVG capability, avionics, logistics, and other fleet investment decisions.

• Supports development of domestic and international firefighting growth plans, including agency outreach, partner identification, customer visits, trade shows, demonstrations, and market-entry planning.

• Use knowledge of aviation operations, logistics, maintenance, flight operations, military/government customers, and international business practices to help shape credible customer solutions.

• Maintains accurate CRM records, account plans, opportunity updates, call reports, forecasts, and capture activity summaries.

• Attends industry functions including trade shows, conferences, association events, customer briefings, and operational demonstrations to build market awareness and customer relationships.

• Collaborates with internal stakeholders to qualify opportunities, avoid unfocused pursuits, and ensure Columbia is pursuing work that supports safety, margin, staffing, aircraft availability, and strategic priorities.

• Supports executive briefings, board-level updates, customer presentations, and internal strategy reviews as requested.

• Leads opportunities through designated sales stages while maintaining quote delivery timelines.

• Provides price to win and competitive guidance to shape company response to quotes.

• Provides after actions feedback to leadership and supporting departments post bid award/loss/cancellation.

WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU:

• Bachelor's Degree required; MBA or advanced military/professional education preferred.

• 15+ years of aviation, aerospace, defense, government, or commercial aircraft experience preferred.

• Demonstrated experience in aviation sales, business development, capture management, customer engagement, program management, or strategic account management.

• Experience working with government, military,