Director of Market Solutions

The Blue Venture Fund; Cleveland (OH); On-site; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

The Blue Venture Fund is seeking a Director of Market Solutions to bridge product, commercialization, and pre-sales. This role sits in Market Solutions and oversees two halves of one mandate: sizing opportunities before roadmap and leading the Solutions Consulting team to scope, sign, and execute business.

The successful candidate will build the team's operating infrastructure, KPIs, coverage models, and reporting to ensure opportunities are captured.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8–12 years in product strategy, product management, solutions consulting, or hybrid roles, with 2–3 years leading a team.
• Experience in healthcare, insurance, education, or regulated industries or ability to ramp in regulated markets.
• Proven ability to turn market research into business cases or roadmap recommendations.
• Experience building operating infrastructure (KPIs, SLAs, coverage models, quotas).
• Ability to identify risks and outline mitigation plans.
• Comfort creating new market strategy processes and maturing team processes.
• Strong written and verbal communication, presenting to senior leadership.
• Client-facing experience and comfort with direct client conversations.
• Knowledge of TAM/SAM/SOM and competitive analysis; AI tooling a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own Market and Competitive Intelligence; maintain a current view of the competitive landscape and turn findings into POVs that inform roadmap and positioning decisions.
• Build Strategic Recommendations from signals across sales, SC, CS, and product roadmap discussions, researching open questions and presenting clear recommendations.
• Size and Assess Product Opportunities; partner with Product and Engineering to evaluate market size and strategic fit without owning execution.
• Draft Commercial Briefs with structured recommendations for early GTM stages and present to leadership.
• Translate Capabilities Into Sellable Packages; define use cases and build repeatable frameworks for new verticals.
• Lead the Solutions Consulting Team; hire, coach, and manage a team to move opportunities from discovery to proposal delivery.
• Elevate the Team's Operating Infrastructure; enhance KPIs, SLAs, quota structures, and coverage models as the team scales.
• Drive Alignment Post-Decision; communicate and align Product, Sales, SC, and Marketing around direction.

Skills

Market strategy

Team leadership

Analytical thinking

Pre-sales experience

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

Director of Market Solutions

Position Summary:

We are seeking an analytical and hands-on Director of Market Solutions to bridge the gap between what Drips could build, what Drips should sell, and the team that helps capture it. This role sits within Market Solutions and carries two connected halves of one mandate: defining and sizing market opportunities before they ever reach Product's roadmap or Sales' pitch deck, and leading the Solutions Consulting team that turns qualified opportunities into scoped, signed, executable business. The ideal candidate will not only lead market and competitive analysis but will build the operational infrastructure, team KPIs, coverage models, and reporting, needed to measure whether the opportunities identified are actually being captured.

If you are passionate about market strategy, energized by building and running a team, and enjoy working at the intersection of product, commercialization, and pre-sales execution, this role is for you.

Who You Are:

This role is for someone who gets real satisfaction from figuring out what's true about a market before anyone else does, and who wants the responsibility of building a team that can prove it. You think in evidence, not hunches, and you're the kind of person who'd rather sit with an unanswered question than settle for the first plausible answer. You are comfortable holding ambiguity and bringing structure to questions nobody has answered yet.

You carry two different kinds of authority comfortably. When you don't have the title to back an idea, you earn the room through the quality of your thinking. When you do have the authority, over a team, a quota, how the work gets done, you use it fully. You'd rather build the process yourself than wait for someone to hand it to you, and you'd rather own an outcome than just advise on one.

What actually drives you is watching something travel the whole distance: a read on the market that becomes a business case, a business case that becomes a team's mandate, and a team that closes the gap between what's possible and what's real. You're not satisfied being the person with the good idea; you want to be the person who builds what makes it true.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own Market and Competitive Intelligence: Maintain a current view of the competitive landscape and broader market trends, and turn findings into point-of-view documents that inform roadmap and positioning decisions.
• Build Strategic Recommendations: Pick up signals from sales calls, Solutions Consulting, Customer Success, and product roadmap conversations, research open strategic questions such as new capability areas and potential partner opportunities, and bring forward a clear recommendation, not just a summary of options.
• Size and Assess Product Opportunities: Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to evaluate incoming capability ideas, sizing the market (TAM/SAM/SOM) and assessing strategic fit, without owning execution, delivery, or the final call.
• Draft Commercial Briefs: Prepare Commercial Briefs, structured recommendations on what to commercialize and why, for the early 'Assess' stage of Drips' go-to-market process, and present them to the cross-functional leadership group that reviews and prioritizes new ideas.
• Translate Capabilities Into Sellable Packages: Define the use case behind new capabilities and work with subject matter experts across targeted industries to establish the ideal client profile, then build repeatable frameworks and playbooks that can be reapplied as Drips expands into new verticals.
• Lead the Solutions Consulting Team: Hire, coach, and manage a team of Solution Consultants who take qualified opportunities from discovery through proposal delivery, ensuring the team has the skills, coverage, and support to do that work well.
• Elevate the Team's Operating Infrastructure: Build on the existing KPIs, SLAs, quota structure, and coverage model for Solutions Consulting, sharpening and scaling them so the department can keep growing without outgrowing its own process.
• Drive Alignment Post-Decision: Once direction is set, help communicate and align Product, Sales, Solutions Consulting, and Marketing around it.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8 to 12 years of experience in product strategy, product management, solutions consulting, sales engineering, or a hybrid strategy/pre-sales role, ideally in B2B SaaS, including at least 2 to 3 years directly managing or mentoring a team.
• Experience working in or selling into healthcare, insurance, education, or another highly regulated industry, or a demonstrated ability to ramp quickly in a regulated market.
• Demonstrated experience turning market or competitive research into an actual business case or roadmap recommendation, not just a research summary.
• Experience building or maturing operational infrastructure for a team, such as KPIs, SLAs, coverage models, or quota structures, including experience scaling systems that already exist as a team grows.
• Ability to identify risks in a potential opportunity and outline mitigation plans, not just build the case for pursuing it.
• Comfort both establishing new process where none exists yet, on the market strategy side of this role, and maturing and scaling existing process as a team grows, on the Solutions Consulting side.
• Comfort operating without formal authority on strategic recommendations, paired with full ownership and accountability for team management and operations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including comfort presenting analysis and recommendations directly to senior leadership.
• Comfort communicating directly with clients. This role leads a team that works face-to-face with Drips' clients, and should be just as comfortable stepping into a client conversation as presenting internally.
• Working knowledge of market-sizing frameworks (TAM/SAM/SOM) and competitive analysis methods.
• Experience partnering closely with Product and Engineering teams without owning execution is a plus.
• Familiarity with generative AI tools to enhance and automate workflows, such as research synthesis, reporting, or drafting, is a plus.