Director, Business Development

Location and Work Model

• The position is based in Ottawa, Canada.
• The role is explicitly hybrid in Ottawa.
• Travel is approximately one week per month for customer meetings, conferences, or trade shows.

Position Summary

Key Responsibilities

• Lead business development and sales strategy for land, joint, and related digital transformation programs.
• Build relationships with Canadian Armed Forces stakeholders, customers, prime contractors, and industry partners.
• Manage capture planning from opportunity identification through handoff, including teaming, solution shaping, and value proposition development.
• Oversee competitive intelligence, market assessments, and long-range sales forecasts.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and capture teams on solution roadmaps.
• Champion C5ISRT, command and control, and data-enabled capabilities.
• Mentor the BD and sales team to achieve revenue, order-intake, and profitability objectives.
• Represent Thales Canada at industry forums and customer and government events.

Process and Development

• Develop strategic alliances, analyze and influence customer requirements, and position Thales products and solutions.
• Lead or support RFI and RFP activities, including capture strategy, bid-team organization, competitive analysis, price-to-win, and proposal efforts.
• Manage assigned resources and capture or bid budgets until assignment of a Capture Leader.
• Investigate market opportunities, develop capture plans, and contribute to teaming-agreement negotiations.
• Maintain opportunity qualification, value propositions, review timing, and product competitiveness.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.
• At least 5 years of Canadian defence sales experience with proven sales and business development success, or equivalent government and business development experience.
• Strong understanding of Canadian and allied defence procurement processes.
• Technical experience in C5ISRT, command, control, and communication systems and products.
• Knowledge of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
• Strategic capture-management, competitive-positioning, and stakeholder-engagement skills.
• Leadership, team-management, financial, business, negotiation, communication, and presentation capabilities.
• Eligibility or ability to obtain authorization for access to controlled Canadian or US technical information.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in software sales in a defence environment.
• Demonstrated product sales experience.
• Bilingualism in French and English.
• Experience with CRM systems and digital tools including Power BI.

Compensation

• The reference total target cash range, including annual base salary and variable compensation target, is $160,000–$180,000–$210,000 CAD annually.

Security and Compliance

• The position may require eligibility for the Canadian Controlled Goods Program, Canadian Industrial Security Program, NATO Secret clearance, ITAR, or EAR authorization.