PSD Group has been retained by a growing aerospace and advanced manufacturing business to appoint a Senior Business Development Manager into a newly established role focused on defence growth.

This is not a role where you will simply inherit an existing pipeline and manage a set of accounts. The brief is to identify where the next generation of defence opportunities will come from, build the relationships that matter, and turn those relationships into substantial, sustainable programmes.

You will work closely with the Defence Director and wider commercial and engineering teams to shape the defence growth strategy, develop new customer relationships and lead the capture of complex opportunities across major OEMs, prime contractors, the UK MoD and emerging neo-primes.

The ambition is significant: to build towards £50m of new defence revenue per annum over the next five years.

What you will be responsible for:

• Identifying, qualifying and developing new defence opportunities across platforms, advanced technologies and emerging capability areas.
• Building trusted relationships with senior stakeholders across OEMs, primes, the UK MoD and the wider defence ecosystem.
• Leading capture planning, bid strategy, commercial input and negotiations for complex, high-value programmes.
• Developing a robust pipeline, forecasting accurately and bringing commercial discipline to the growth agenda.
• Providing market insight across procurement models, customer strategies, technology roadmaps and competitive positioning.
• Working across the business to ensure successful transition from contract award into NPI and programme execution.
• Helping shape the company’s longer-term approach to the defence market as the business continues to grow.

We are looking for someone with a strong track record in defence business development and programme capture, ideally gained within complex manufacturing. Experience within aerospace or weapon systems would be advantageous,particularly where this has involved technically complex products, demanding customer requirements and long-term programme development.

You will have experience winning and contracting high-value defence programmes, established relationships across the defence supply chain and the credibility to operate comfortably with senior customer and internal stakeholders.

Just as important is how you operate. This role needs someone commercially sharp, curious, resilient and comfortable creating momentum where the path is not yet fully defined. Someone who can spot an opportunity, open the right doors and then bring the organisation together to win it.

BPSS eligibility is essential. Experience across UK, European and US defence markets would be advantageous.

If you are interested in building something rather than simply managing what already exists, I would be interested in speaking with you.

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