Aerospace – Director Business Development, Toronto

Stonewood Group Inc.; Toronto; On-site; CAD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company specializing in advanced RF solutions is seeking a Director of Business Development to spearhead proposal development and lead strategic client engagements. This role requires extensive experience in engineering and business development within high technology sectors, along with strong leadership and communication skills. The successful candidate will contribute to the firm’s growth and play a critical role in establishing winning proposal strategies across various markets.

Benefits

Strong industry and company growth

Highly entrepreneurial culture

Successful organization with committed ownership

Qualifications

• At least ten years of engineering or business development experience in high technology organizations.
• Experience writing proposals for projects.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and negotiate effectively.

Responsibilities

• Lead RFP response and proposal development to support business growth.
• Analyze customer needs and develop relationships with key customers.
• Manage the proposal process and coordinate inputs from technical teams.

Skills

Communication

Commercial Acumen

Quality Orientation

Team Skills

Education

Electronic systems engineering degree or related

Job description

Our client is a Toronto-based world-class designer and manufacturer of advanced microwave, millimeter-wave and electro-optic components and sub-systems.

Our client was founded in 1992 on a mission to provide high reliability, cutting-edge RF solutions. The company has grown by focusing on customer success and by assembling a fully-integrated, skilled team of experts in high frequency circuits and systems, communication and radar subsystem design, engineering and custom manufacturing.

The firm is uniquely vertically integrated through all key functions including RFIC design in GaAs, GaN ,SiGe and CMOS, thin film manufacturing, automated HMIC (Hybrid Microwave Integrated Circuit) Assembly, CNC machining, PC Board population, and system integration and test, allowing responsive, high quality support of customers’ demanding requirements. The firm’s expertise in developing customized RF and electro-optic sensing and communications solutions makes our client a critical partner in commercial aerospace, defense, industrial, medical, space and SatCom markets.

Our client consistently invests heavily in IR&D and boasts a large engineering team with most having advanced degrees in their realms of specialization. In the past few years our client has further augmented its R&D footprint by developing strategic research partnerships at selected universities in Canada and the US.

Our client occupies a 65,000 square foot state-of-the-art engineering and manufacturing facility in Toronto including Class 1000 to 10,000 clean rooms. The firm’s systems maintain compliance to AS9100C and ISO9001:2008 and encompass all the core capabilities needed for end-to-end electronic product development, redesign and life cycle maintenance. The firm also maintains a second facility in Canada.

To best serve US customers with ITAR restrictions, and to provide a 2nd source with identical capability, our client has also established a US-based design and manufacturing facility focused on MMIC and high power device design.

Scope of the Position

Reporting to the President and CEO, the Director of Business Development will lead RFP response, proposal development and delivery essential to our client’s business growth across all market segments. This includes working with customers and playing a vital role in the continued development of the firm’s proposal process, win strategies, competitive analysis, compliance matrices, proposal outlines, schedules and themes, and proposal presentation.

The Director of Business Development will also coordinate the requisite engineering/technical inputs, work closely with legal, and provide guidance on pre-proposal and proposal methodologies. This includes reviewing, editing and authoring portions of the proposal.

This is an outstanding opportunity that features:

• Strong industry and company growth
• A successful organization with committed ownership
• Highly entrepreneurial culture
• A highly educated and diverse employee structure
• An opportunity to make a real difference

Responsibilities

• Analyze and understand customers needs (technical, programmatic, commercial)
• Probe into and understand market and competitive forces relevant to customers and their pursuit
• Develop relationships with key customers
• Develop and execute pursuit plans to close new contracts, win RFPs, including owning the vision for how our client will win
• Participate in market analyses identifying potential opportunities and customers, and to assess win probabilities and competitive landscape
• Plan, organize and execute proposal development activities, before and after RFP release.
• Manage and contribute to technical, management, past performance and cost documents.
• Develop/mature proposal win strategies, win themes, key messages and ghosting opportunities/statements.
• Assign proposal authors and holds them accountable for work products; assign actions and tracks completion.
• Work with engineering on technical inputs
• Write selected proposal sections; reviews and performs technical editing of work products from others.
• Work with outside legal counsel as required
• Work with and coordinate input from third party bid partners
• Lead/manage the coordination, assembly and scheduling of proposal production
• Implement, revise, and/or maintain proposal development processes, procedures, and tools
• Provide overall leadership regarding proposal process methods, and tools
• Work with Executive team to continuously assess and adjust priorities in the opportunity pipeline
• Provide analyses – business case, performance, and proposal development – to prioritize pipeline opportunities and to assist in developing bid/no-bid decisions
• Create and track schedules and budgets then report status to senior management as required for key opportunities;
• Manage resources according to the pipeline plan ensuring personnel and other resources are available to support.

Competency Profile

The following competencies listed below define the role ofDirector Business Development.

Communication

Expresses ideas in a clear, fluent and concise manner; Written and oral arguments are compelling and responsive to the needs of the audience; Comprehends communications from others and responds appropriately.

Results Orientation

Focuses strongly on achieving agreed upon outcomes and ensures that key objectives are met. Conveys a sense of urgency and drives issues to closure. Aims to improve upon past performance. Establishes aggressive personal targets and strives to achieve them.

Planning and Objective Setting

Systematic in approach to work. Produces action plans in which objectives are defined and steps for achieving them are clearly specified. Plans by breaking down large tasks into subtasks. Develops plans that anticipate obstacles. Is realistic about time-scales and builds in appropriate checkpoints, milestones and controls in order to ensure that desired results are realized.

Commercial Acumen

Applies appropriate commercial and financial principles. Understands situations in terms of costs, profits, added-value and return on investment. Appreciates the commercial impact of own work on the organization’s total expenses and revenues.

Quality Orientation

Strives for excellence in products, processes and/or services through continued evaluation, enhancement and redefinition of quality standards.

Team Skills

Helps to create a sense of team spirit and harmonious relations through cooperation and support. Balances personal goals with those of the team. Fosters collaboration among team members.

Role Expertise

Demonstrates critical technical or professional knowledge/skills related to the role. Has thorough knowledge of relevant products, services and methods. Expands technical knowledge/skills and keeps up-to-date in own area of expertise.

Boundary Spanning

Incorporates information about the organization’s structure and protocol into decisions; Attentive and alert to shifting interpersonal dynamics; Establishes the necessary support networks and cross functional relationships through rapport building; Recognizes, maintains and effectively and objectively balances the interests and needs of one’s own group with those of the broader organization.

Key Performance Deliverables

In light of the identified responsibilities, the following are the type of deliverables that the position is designed to achieve.

• To be discussed with the successful candidate

Preferred Experience

The following indicates specific industry, and functional experience/qualifications that are important to the successful achievement of the identified responsibilities and performance deliverables.

• At least ten years of engineering, program management, and/or business development experience ideally with high technology organizations.
• Electronic systems engineering degree or related
• Business development, capture management experience in the Space, Defense or Intelligence sectors (Desired).
• Reputation as a winner – demonstrated expertise and success in leading pursuits and proposals
• Experience with different procurement processes, including industry and government.
• Demonstrated ability to influence and negotiate.
• Demonstrated broad, complex strategic thinking capability
• Proven ability to assess competition and other critical factors affecting a pursuit.
• Experience writing proposals for projects
• Demonstrated ability to be customer focused
• Understanding of financial business models
• Experience in sophisticated electronics manufacturing environments preferred
• Experience in mid-sized growth-oriented private manufacturing companies would be highly valued.
• Strong team orientation well suited to building consensus
• A bias for action combined with a hands-on approach and an entrepreneurial spirit.
• A sophisticated understanding of the processes and metrics required for manufacturing success
• Exceptional attention to detail

Remuneration

• Highly competitive compensation commensurate with the right candidate.