Business Development Manager | North America

MANUS; Eindhoven; On-site; EUR 589,000 - 643,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

€4,400-€4,800 monthly salary

27 vacation days

Holiday allowance 8%

Travel allowance

Informal working environment

High-tech products and talented team

Wellbeing contribution

Job summary

MANUS is seeking a Business Development Manager to build pipeline and close the first order across robotics, embodied AI, teleoperation, VR, motion capture, and related fields. You’ll identify opportunities, qualify deals, and drive new business with a multi-vertical approach.

You will report to the Sales Director North America and work with Channel, Marketing, and Product teams. Expect international travel (~30–40%) and regular presence at the Eindhoven office (3+ days/week).

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years of experience in new business or business development in technical B2B.
• Experience opening up new markets, segments, or regions.
• Excellent English; Dutch is a plus.
• Willingness to travel internationally 30–40% and to work across time zones.

Responsibilities

• Build your own pipeline through outbound, networking, and market research.
• Qualify opportunities with budget, timeline, decision-makers, and requirements.
• Close the first order and hand over accounts to management with documentation.
• Collaborate with Marketing, Channel, and Product teams to align campaigns and materials.
• Provide market feedback to Product Management based on new market insights.

Skills

New business development

Pipeline building

Market expansion

Client outreach

English proficiency

Tools

HubSpot

Job description

The market for embodied AI is growing faster than we can keep up with it. Every month, new companies emerge that build robots designed to mimic human hands, and every month there are research groups, teleoperation teams, and simulation studios that have never heard of us. There’s more of the market out there than we’re currently tapping into. That’s exactly what this role is all about.

MANUS works with key accounts, which we serve directly, and channel accounts, which are managed through partners. We’re looking for someone to fill the front end: the companies that aren’t yet customers.

As a Business Development Manager, you’ll be responsible for new business. You’ll identify, qualify, and close the first order. Your focus will be on new business within the verticals MANUS currently serves, as well as exploring markets where we don’t yet have a presence.

Your role is clearly defined on the back end but broad on the front end. You decide for yourself where to seek out commercial opportunities and which new segments to tap into. You’ll work with a target list of dozens of accounts in fields such as humanoid robotics, embodied AI, teleoperation, simulation & VR training, motion capture, research, biomechanics, life sciences, and defense.

This is a role with a great deal of responsibility: you’ll build the majority of your pipeline yourself through outbound outreach, networking, trade shows, conferences, and the early identification of interesting companies and developments.

Another key aspect of this role is gathering market feedback and translating insights from new markets into concrete input for Product Management. You therefore not only have a commercial drive but also the ability to assess market developments and customer needs and determine where real commercial opportunities lie.

You will report to the Sales Director North America and work closely with the Key Account Manager, Channel Account Manager, Marketing, and Product Management.

Your responsabilities

Build your pipeline

• Build your own pipeline through outbound, networking, and market research; you don’t wait for leads
• Maintain and expand the target list: which companies are new, who is building, and who has secured funding
• Identify new segments and propose them with a solid business case, including the cost of entering them
• Be present where this market comes together: robotics and AI conferences, trade shows, universities, etc.

Qualify and Close

• Qualify rigorously: budget, timeline, decision-makers, and what is technically required
• Ask the right questions to identify the best solution; this is essential for success. In every conversation, provide something of value to the customer
• Set up pilots with success criteria agreed upon and documented in advance; no pilot without a defined outcome
• Close the first order and leave the account in a transferable state: stakeholders mapped, expectations documented, and nothing kept only in your head
• Disengage early when the opportunity is unlikely to work, and do so with a well-founded rationale

Position and competition

• Keep the value proposition sharp against the alternatives: competing gloves, camera-based tracking, and companies considering building it in-house
• Do not compete on price, but on precision, reliability, and the time and data value we deliver to the customer
• Bring market signals back into the organization: pricing pressure, missing functionality, where we are losing deals, and why

Transfer and Collaboration

• Hand over accounts to Key Account Management at the agreed point, without causing disruption for the customer
• Work with Channel to assess whether a new account is better served through a partner rather than directly
• Work with Marketing to align campaigns and materials with the segments you are opening

Discipline and Reporting

• Keep HubSpot fully up to date: accounts, contacts, activities, pipeline, and forecast
• Provide a reliable quarterly forecast, supported by documented evidence rather than intuition
• Consistently document wins/losses, including the competitor and the reason

Your first year

These are the tasks you'll be taking on in your first year. They are intentionally not all scheduled at the same time, but they set the direction for the role.

• A self-built pipeline that stands on its own, rather than relying on inbound leads
• New customers acquired across multiple verticals, not just the most obvious segments
• Pilots running against predefined success criteria, with a demonstrable share progressing to broader deployment
• A handover process that works: accounts are transferred to Key Account Management at the agreed point
• A well-founded proposal for at least one new segment, including a market assessment and the resources required for success
• A complete and up-to-date view of the potential market in HubSpot, including companies that were not on the radar last quarter
• A forecast that the business can reliably plan around
• Win/loss data captured in a way that enables us to learn from it rather than repeat the same mistakes

We’re looking for someone who will take the initiative to identify the next client, initiate the conversation, and see it through to the end. Someone who can distinguish between interest and budget. And, above all, someone who follows through.

An existing network in the robotics, embodied AI, or XR market—or experience with the transition from pilot to large-scale rollout—is a plus.

• Minimum 5 years of experience in new business or business development in technical B2B
• Demonstrated ability to build your own pipeline, rather than relying solely on inbound leads
• Experience opening up new markets, segments, or regionsExperience with a combined hardware and software licensing model is a plus
• Affinity with robotics, AI, motion capture, XR, or related deep tech; you don’t need to be an engineer, but you do need to be technically credible
• Comfortable speaking with engineers and budget holders, often in the same meeting
• Strong qualification and discipline: keeping the CRM up to date, substantiating forecasts, and documenting win/loss data; HubSpot experience is a plus
• Able to walk away from a deal that isn’t a good fit, and explain why
• Excellent English, both written and spoken; Dutch is a plus
• Willingness to travel internationally approximately 30–40% of the time, including trade shows and conferences
• Comfortable working across time zones and typically being present at our Eindhoven office 3+ days per week

What we offer

• €4.400- €4.800 per month, depending on skill level plus a variable based on the commission structure
• 27 vacation days based on a full-time working week (40 hours).
• Holiday allowance of 8%
• Travel allowance: mileage reimbursement or NS Business Card
• An informal working environment with a flat organizational structure
• Work with high-tech products and talented colleagues
• Wellbeing: fresh fruit and a contribution from MANUS towards a membership at EHgym at the Strijp-T site

Who are we?

At MANUS, we’re redefining what’s possible with human-machine interaction. Our next-gen data gloves deliver ultra-precise, drift-free, and occlusion-free hand and finger tracking — capturing even the most subtle movements in real time.

Powered by an advanced EMF tracking system, our technology eliminates common issues like sensor drift and positional offset. That means seamless control, accurate spatial alignment, and zero guesswork — whether you’re piloting a robot or training AI.

Our tracking data sets the gold standard for embodied AI. By giving machines access to human-level dexterity, we’re enabling them to move, grasp, and interact with the world as naturally as we do.

From robotics and AI to VR, entertainment, and advanced research — the world’s most innovative companies trust MANUS to help build the next generation of intelligent systems. Our technology is trusted by 2,000+ leading research institutions and technology companies worldwide. We are also officially integrated into NVIDIA Isaac Lab as a native teleoperation input for high-fidelity manipulation, placing MANUS at the foundation of the embodied AI development stack.

We look forward to welcoming you to MANUS!