Business Development Manager - Defence

Valarian; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits package

Job summary

Valarian, headquartered in London, seeks a hands-on Business Development Manager - Defence to lead our defence market strategy across government, primes, integrators and end users. You will map accounts, engage stakeholders, and drive bid and capture management while ensuring compliance with UK security classifications.

You’ll design scalable GTM plans, collaborate with Product and Engineering, and build a BD team to accelerate pipeline and market penetration in a fast-growing, regulated

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading in BD, defence, government or regulated B2G/B2B environments.
• Hands-on experience with capture management, bid and proposal development.
• Experience managing an ecosystem of primes, integrators and government stakeholders.
• Practical experience with defence assurance and compliance, including UK Government Security Classifications.

Responsibilities

• Oversee and execute Valarian’s defence business development strategy.
• Build and mature defence market posture, including security clearances and assurance requirements.
• Design and implement scalable go-to-market across government, primes, integrators and end users.
• Work with Product and Engineering to ensure offering is positioned for defence customers.
• Build and maintain BD playbooks, standards and processes for defence sales.
• Lead opportunity management, account mapping and pipeline generation.
• Own bid and proposal development, capture management and RFIs/RFPs responses.
• Develop and manage relationships with primes, system integrators and government stakeholders.
• Manage audits, certifications and engagement with external assessors and procurement teams.
• Set metrics and reporting for pipeline, win rates and market penetration.
• Hire, develop and lead a small, high-performing defence BD team.

Skills

BD leadership

Defence sector

CRM & pipeline

Stakeholder management

Go-to-market strategy

Bid & proposal

Compliance awareness

Tools

CRM systems

Job description

Valarian: A New Era of Sovereign Intelligence

Valarian is a dual use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. Backed by a Series A funding round of $50m led by NEA, we are rethinking security beyond traditional military domains to address asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions. We provide the control infrastructure that allows government and regulated enterprise to put frontier-class AI to work safely.

• Scaling open-weight models without external inference endpoints.
• Putting frontier class AI to work across organisations through partnerships with other leading AI startups such as Perplexity.
• Increasing operational resiliency for air gapped, on prem, and cloud based systems.
• Securing intellectual property and maintaining auditability for high stakes enterprise environments.
• Facilitating secure information flow during disaster response, M&A due diligence, and privileged legal communications.

We've only scratched the surface. Built in Britain by veterans of the Ministry of Defence, British Forces, Darktrace, and elite engineering backgrounds, we are driven by a shared mission to safeguard western democracy . Whether you join our London HQ or our wider global organisation, you'll be part of a collaborative, high performing team creating the cutting edge software and infrastructure that defines the frontier of enterprise AI.

The Role

As a Business Development Manager - Defence at Valarian, you will define and execute our defence market strategy with a strong focus on building and protecting our commercial ecosystem across government, primes, integrators and end users. You'll be responsible for securing how our organisation operates in the defence market day-to-day: from account mapping and stakeholder engagement, to bid and capture management, to compliance and assurance across systems.This is a hands-on leadership role combining strategy, architecture and execution. You'll report directly to the Head of Delivery, and work closely with Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance and Leadership to embed defence readiness into everything we build, while evolving our compliance posture across UK Government Security Classifications and relevant assurance frameworks.

What you’ll do:

• Oversee and execute Valarian’s defence business development strategy
• Build and mature our defence market posture, including security clearances, UK Government Security Classifications and relevant assurance requirements
• Design and implement a scalable go-to-market approach across government, primes, integrators and end users
• Work with Product and Engineering to ensure our offering is positioned and built for defence customers
• Build and maintain BD playbooks, standards and processes for defence sales
• Lead opportunity management, account mapping and pipeline generation
• Own bid and proposal development, capture management and responses to RFIs/RFPs
• Develop and manage relationships with primes, system integrators, government stakeholders and industry bodies
• Manage audits, certifications and engagement with external assessors and procurement teams
• Set metrics and reporting for pipeline, win rates and market penetration
• Hire, develop and lead a small, high-performing defence BD team

What you’ll bring:

• Proven experience leading in BD, defence, government or highly regulated B2G/B2B environments
• Deep…
• Hands-on experience with capture management, bid and proposal development
• Experience managing an ecosystem of primes, integrators, government stakeholders and partners
• Practical experience with defence assurance and compliance, including UK Government Security Classifications and procurement frameworks
• Strong understanding of account mapping, stakeholder engagement and long sales cycles
• Experience using CRM and pipeline management tools
• Track record of building go-to-market capability from scratch in high-growth environments
• Ability to balance compliance and security requirements with speed to market
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication across technical, commercial and executive audiences
• Experience building or scaling BD/sales teams, or readiness to do so
• Focus on real outcomes, not box-ticking
• Security Clearance is preferable, but not essential
• Background is secondary to mindset. We want someone prepared to hustle, learn the defence landscape fast, and own outcomes. The successful candidate could be from any background.

Benefits

Our benefits are designed to ensure our employees feel taken care of and are proud to be a part of the Valarian team. We are committed to consistently enhancing our benefit package, taking into account the overall well-being an