Founding Business Development Lead

Praetori; Netherlands; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Praetori is hiring a Founding Business Development Lead to open doors in European defence, intelligence, public security and critical infrastructure. You will build relationships with ministries, agencies, primes, and operators, earning credible conversations through deep operational insight.

You will be among the first commercial hires, shaping outbound strategies, pipelines, and reference-able pilots across Europe, working closely with founders and engineers.

Qualifications

• You can point to specific complex, high-value deals you personally opened and moved, and name the outcome.
• A record of opening and advancing complex, high-value deals into government, defence or enterprise, from a standing start.
• Fluency in long, multi-stakeholder cycles where trust and technical credibility decide the outcome.
• The ability to learn a hard domain deeply and hold your own with serious operators.
• Writing and presence that make senior people want the next meeting.
• Self-direction bordering on the entrepreneurial. You build the process, not wait for one.
• Willingness to travel across Europe. Fluent English.

Responsibilities

• Map the European defence, intelligence, public security and critical-infrastructure landscape, and identify where Praetori creates decisive advantage.
• Run disciplined, research-led outbound to senior operators. Earn meetings through relevance, not volume.
• Build a real command of each account's mission, constraints and procurement reality.
• Uncover the operational problems beneath stated requirements, and shape opportunities Praetori can own.
• Build trust across technical, operational and procurement stakeholders through long sales cycles.
• Navigate public-sector and defence procurement with patience and precision.
• Partner with forward deployed engineers to run credible discovery and shape early pilots.
• Keep an honest pipeline. Forecast conservatively and close out dead deals early.

Skills

High-value deals

Multi-stakeholder sales

Domain learning

Written communication

Self-direction

Travel readiness

English fluency

Job description

Defence & Government · Haarlem, the Netherlands · Hybrid · Frequent travel

Founding Business Development Lead

We are looking for someone who can open doors inside the institutions that keep Europe safe, understand their hardest problems, and turn early conviction into lasting partnerships.

Praetori builds Continuous Control Infrastructure: one sovereign software layer that keeps the operational picture, the decision and the action connected while conditions change.

Operations move continuously. Most systems do not. When information fragments across tools and the situation shifts faster than the response, control is lost. Praetori closes that gap, so critical teams understand, decide and act as one, and hold sovereign control when external dependencies fail.

This is not theoretical. Our workflows are shaped around how critical teams actually work, tested against real public-security requirements, and architected for sovereign control from the start. We are in active, confidential engagement with defence and mission-critical organisations under operational pressure.

Our mission is to secure Europe's operational independence.

About the role

Sovereign infrastructure is not sold. It is earned. Our buyers are ministries, agencies, primes and operators of critical infrastructure. They move deliberately, they carry real consequences, and they will not be won by a pitch. They are won by someone who understands their operational reality better than the incumbents do.

You are one of the first commercial people at Praetori. You will not inherit a territory or a pipeline. You will build them: find the organisations that matter, reach the people inside them who feel the problem most acutely, and earn the right to a serious conversation. You work directly with the founders, forward deployed engineers and product.

Within twelve months, you will have built a qualified pipeline of high-consequence European accounts that did not exist before, turned early design partners into live references, and left behind an outbound and qualification approach the next commercial hires inherit.

What you’ll do

• 01 Map the European defence, intelligence, public security and critical-infrastructure landscape, and identify where Praetori creates decisive advantage.
• 02 Run disciplined, research-led outbound to senior operators. Earn meetings through relevance, not volume.
• 03 Build a real command of each account's mission, constraints and procurement reality.
• 04 Uncover the operational problems beneath stated requirements, and shape opportunities Praetori can own.
• 05 Build trust across technical, operational and procurement stakeholders through long sales cycles.
• 06 Navigate public-sector and defence procurement with patience and precision.
• 07 Partner with forward deployed engineers to run credible discovery and shape early pilots.
• 08 Keep an honest pipeline. Forecast conservatively and close out dead deals early.

What we’re looking for

Required

• You can point to specific complex, high-value deals you personally opened and moved, and name the outcome.
• A record of opening and advancing complex, high-value deals into government, defence or enterprise, from a standing start.
• Fluency in long, multi-stakeholder cycles where trust and technical credibility decide the outcome.
• The ability to learn a hard domain deeply and hold your own with serious operators.
• Writing and presence that make senior people want the next meeting.
• Self-direction bordering on the entrepreneurial. You build the process, not wait for one.
• Willingness to travel across Europe. Fluent English.

Preferred

• Experience selling into or working within defence, intelligence, national security or critical infrastructure.
• Familiarity with European procurement, security requirements and public-sector buying.
• A relevant network among European operators, primes or agencies.

Europe can no longer assume that the systems its critical organisations depend on will stay available, trusted, or under its own control. Praetori exists to change that. You would help build the sovereign infrastructure that secures Europe's operational independence, from the ground up.

The problems are hard and the ownership is real. You would work alongside the founders and a small, deliberately chosen team, with room to grow as the company does and the rare chance to shape foundational systems before they exist. If you have felt the cost of losing control, this is where you rebuild it.

Our standards

We work with extreme ownership and low ego. We hold a high bar, first for ourselves, and we separate ideas from identity so we can argue hard and decide fast. We favour action over deliberation, say the true thing plainly and early, and put the mission ahead of comfort or hierarchy. Status here is earned by what you build, not your title.

Location Haarlem, the Netherlands · Hybrid · Frequent travel

Travel Approx. 40% across Europe

Compensation A market-rate salary, meaningful equity, and a performance bonus.

Eligibility Right to work in the EU. Willingness to undergo security screening.

Apply for this role

Founding Business Development Lead · Haarlem, the Netherlands