Technical Sales Specialist

Terra Industries; Greater London; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

Terra Industries in London is seeking a Technical Sales Lead to own the technical side of every commercial deal. You will design and run demonstrations, act as the technical authority in meetings, and shape proposal content, collaborating with engineering and production teams.

You will translate customer needs into actionable technical plans, coordinate scope and timing with the commercial team, and contribute to future product direction while traveling regularly across Africa.

Qualifications

• 3+ years in solutions engineering, sales engineering, pre-sales, or field applications, selling a physical system with a software layer on top.
• Fluency across hardware and software: sensors and optics, RF and comms, power and networking, plus a platform layer.
• Strong technical writing for proposals, scoping documents, and tender responses.
• Experience running demonstrations in the field, including ones where something failed in front of the customer and the meeting still went well.
• High ownership and low supervision; no pre-existing demo environment or catalog.
• Willing to work from our London office and travel regularly to Nigeria, Ghana, and customer sites across Africa.
• Experience in Africa or emerging markets and defense, hard tech, or critical infrastructure interest.

Responsibilities

• Design and run demonstrations for critical infrastructure operators, built with the engineering team.
• Serve as the technical authority in sales meetings, answering questions about Terra systems and documenting new capability requests.
• Scope deployments against site count, perimeter length, terrain, and threat profile; build scoping questions for quotes.
• Contribute the technical content of proposals, RFQ responses, and tenders.
• Translate between engineering leadership and customer on configurability, production delivery timelines, and costs.
• Build enduring assets: configuration logic, a technical qualification standard, demo scripts, and a maintained answer bank.
• Feed real commercial demand signals back to product and engineering teams.

Skills

Solutions engineering

Technical writing

Field demonstrations

Hardware & software fluency

Ownership & autonomy

Job description

Terra Industries is a defense technology company building autonomous security systems that protect critical infrastructure across Africa and the Global South. Founded in 2024, we design and manufacture the full stack: the Archer VTOL long-range surveillance drone, the Iroko quadcopter, the Duma autonomous ground vehicle, the Kallon solar-powered AI sentry tower, and ArtemisOS, the AI operating system that brings data intelligence and autonomy to all of it. Our systems are already deployed protecting power plants, mines, and other nationally critical assets valued at approximately $11 billion across multiple countries.

In August 2026, we extended our seed round to $52 million from 8VC, Silent Ventures, Nova Global, Belief Capital, SV Angel, and Norleo Space Investments. We are expanding globally while keeping manufacturing in Africa: the 15,000 sq. ft. Pax-1 flagship in Abuja, Nigeria, and Pax-2 in Accra, Ghana, which, at 34,000 sq. ft., will be the largest drone factory on the continent and is targeting 50,000 units a year across our aerial portfolio by 2028. Expansion is planned across the Gulf, South America, and South Asia.

We're a small team working at the intersection of hard technology and security. We move quickly, we give people real ownership early, and we expect them to run with it.

The Role

We're hiring a Technical Sales Lead, based in London, to own the technical side of every commercial deal. You'll design and run the demonstrations that show operators what our systems actually do, serve as the technical authority in sales meetings, and scope and write the technical content of proposals. You'll coordinate daily with the engineering team and production teams, translating between what customers need and what we build.

This is Terra's first dedicated technical commercial hire. There is no demo kit, no configuration guide, no technical answer bank and no proposal template. You'll build them, working directly with the Director of Commercial and the founding team rather than inside an established pre-sales organization.

What You'll Do

• Design and run demonstrations for critical infrastructure operators, built with the engineering team
• Serve as the technical authority in sales meetings, answering questions about the technical capabilities of Terra systems and documenting new capability requests
• Scope deployments against site count, perimeter length, terrain, and threat profile, and build the scoping questions the commercial team asks before anything is quoted
• Contribute the technical content of proposals, RFQ responses, and tenders
• Translate between engineering leadership and the customer on what is configurable, what is fixed, what production can deliver and by when, and what a requested integration costs in engineering time
• Build the assets that outlast you: configuration logic, a technical qualification standard, demo scripts, and a maintained answer bank the next hires can run without you
• Feed real commercial demand signal back to the product and engineering teams

What We're Looking For

• 3+ years in solutions engineering, sales engineering, pre-sales, or field applications, selling a physical system with a software layer on top of it. An engineer who moved into customer-facing work counts
• Fluency across hardware and software together: sensors and optics, RF and comms, power and networking, plus a platform layer. You do not need all of it, but you cannot be strong in only one half
• Strong technical writing. A large part of this role is proposals, scoping documents, and tender responses that stand on their own in front of a procurement committee
• Experience running demonstrations in the field, including ones where something failed in front of the customer and the meeting still went well
• High ownership and low need for supervision. There is no demo environment, solution catalog, or pre-sales team waiting on day one
• Willing to work from our London office and to travel regularly to Nigeria, Ghana, and customer sites across Africa, often at short notice
• Exposure to mining, oil and gas, power, ports, or telecom operators preferred, as is UAV, counter-UAS, ISR, or physical security integration experience
• Experience in Africa or other emerging markets, particularly where grid power and connectivity cannot be assumed.
• Genuine interest in defense, hard tech, or critical infrastructure