Director of Business Development – Europe

As the Business Development Director for Europe, your primary mission is to introduce, integrate, and deploy Arkeus’ autonomous sensing systems and edge-AI perception payloads into the European military uncrewed aerial fleet. You will build the sales pipeline, local customer relationships, and capture strategies from initial foundations, navigating a dual-track strategy targeting traditional defense markets in Germany and France and rapidly evolving markets in Poland. This is an elite pioneering and hunter role requiring deep domain knowledge and a relentless drive to win.

Responsibilities

• Market Entry & Advocacy: Establish Arkeus as a trusted advisor to key stakeholders, military operators, and procurement bodies within European Ministries of Defence (MoDs) and European OEMs.
• Pipeline Execution: Source, qualify, and close multi-million-dollar sales opportunities across European armed forces, navigating disparate regional requirements.
• OEM Design-Ins: Build strategic commercial relationships with leading European drone and aerospace manufacturers to design Arkeus payloads into next-generation airframes.
• Capture & Proposal Leadership: Lead the capture strategy for targeted European government tenders, bilateral defense contracts, and rapid procurement initiatives. Write winning proposals backed by deep technical understanding.
• Mission-Aligned Selling: Translate complex European theater requirements (e.g., GPS-denied navigation, autonomous targeting in contested airspace, Baltic/Eastern European multi-domain ISR) into tailored Arkeus system configurations.
• Flight Tests & Demonstrations: Coordinate and execute high-impact product demonstrations and military flight trials alongside our technical Customer Success and Integration teams.
• Market Intelligence: Feed critical European requirements, European Defence Fund (EDF) policy updates, and competitor insights back to product teams to steer our global product roadmap, driving information sharing through our CRM.
• Leadership: Demonstrate leadership through example by putting our customers first through a culture of leadership, ownership, disruption and audacity.

Requirements

• Defense BD Track Record: 5+ years of proven success in defense business development, capture management, or sales in Europe, with a verifiable history of meeting revenue targets in a greenfield territory.
• Geographic Expertise: Based in Scandinavia with an active, relevant network across European MoDs and defense aerospace primes, particularly in Germany, France, or Poland.
• UAS Domain Knowledge: Deep understanding of the uncrewed aerial systems market, including payloads, sensors (EO/IR, radar), open architectures, and autonomous software.
• Procurement Fluency: Comprehensive understanding of European defense procurement pathways, NATO standards, and individual national budget cycles.
• Technical Credibility: Ability to confidently discuss sensor specifications, edge-computing limits, and airborne software architectures with European aerospace engineers and military operators.
• Clearance: Must hold, or be readily capable of obtaining, an EU / NATO Secret (or equivalent national) security clearance.
• Culture: Passion for a fast-paced, dynamic, and creative environment that prioritizes our Customers receiving a Compelling Experience through demonstration of leadership, ownership, disruption and audacity.
• Travel: Willingness to travel frequently across Europe (up to 50%) to drive localized customer engagement.

Benefits

• You will work on the hardest problems in deep-tech — optics, autonomy, real-time AI and hardware-software integration in a single product. The gap between what you build and where it ends up is almost nonexistent.
• You will collaborate with exceptional leaders who have decades of combined experience in AI, optics and defense. You will be learning from — and contributing to — the best in the field.
• You will become part of a close-knit, ego-free team where ideas compete on merit, not seniority. Low politics, high trust. The kind of team you will still be talking about in ten years.
• You will work hard and be expected to bring your best — and in return you will grow faster than you ever would at a large organization.
• You will work on technology that is already deployed in real environments — protecting lives and strengthening security across defense and national security applications.
• You will receive a competitive, market-benchmarked salary, structured career pathways built to grow with you, and the opportunity to participate in our Employee Share Option Plan (ESOP).
• You will have the opportunity to mentor bright emerging talent through our highly sought-after intern program and strong connections with leading universities.