Director, Business Development

Director, Business Development

At ICEYE, we design, build and operate the largest fleet of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites in the world. Using advanced technology, our constellation collects topographical data about any location on Earth, day or night, through any weather conditions.

Headquartered in Southern California, our customers are society’s heroes – intelligence professionals, warfighters, first responders, and scientific researchers. As a trusted mission partner, the United States and its allies depend on us for critical information when it matters most.

Role Description

ICEYE is seeking an exceptional Director of Business Development to identify, shape, capture, and expand strategic opportunities across the U.S. Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and allied government customers.

This leader will own growth strategy and execution for a portfolio of space-based ISR, remote sensing, tactical intelligence, and sovereign space infrastructure solutions. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable engaging senior government executives, developing capture strategies for multi-hundred-million-dollar opportunities, and translating operational user needs into actionable business and product strategies.

This is not a traditional defense sales role. We are looking for a builder who thrives in ambiguity, moves with urgency, understands the realities of military and intelligence operations, and wants to help reshape the future of geospatial intelligence and space-enabled national security.

The Director serves as the critical bridge between customers, product development, engineering, and executive leadership, ensuring ICEYE remains aligned to emerging mission requirements while delivering sustainable growth.

Responsibilities

• Pipeline & Capture Strategy: Build, qualify, and execute a multi-billion-dollar pipeline targeting high-priority defense and intelligence customers, transitioning ICEYE US from transactional data sales to integrated hardware/service delivery models (COCO, GOCO, GOGO).

• Identify, qualify, and shape opportunities from early market engagement through contract award.

• Lead capture efforts for strategic pursuits, including competitive positioning, teaming, and win strategy development. Will also hire and lead additional business development and capture teammates.

• Customer Relationship Management: Serve as a senior interface to critical space acquisition authorities, translating tactical warfighter requirements directly into addressable ICEYE US mission solutions.

• Proposal Architecture: Lead cross-functional teams (Engineering, Programs, Business Operation) to craft highly competitive, technically precise responses to OTAs, BAAs, and Federal solicitations.

• Strategic Teaming: Identify and lock in high-value partnerships with major Defense Primes and elite analytics consortia to position ICEYE US as an indispensable hardware, payload, or software node inside the joint kill chain.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Aerospace, Business, or a related field (Master’s or MBA preferred).

• 15+ years of proven experience in aerospace and defense business development, capture management, or programmatic execution.

• Proven track record of past wins securing single-award contracts or OTA vehicles valued at over $250M+ within the national security space domain.

• Foundational understanding of service-level operational movement, tactical theater tasking windows, and joint-force kill chains is highly valued.

• Active TS Clearance

Target Agency Experience

An intimate knowledge of the following mission partners, including their acquisition frameworks, programmatic timelines, and technology roadmaps, is strictly required:

• National Reconnaissance Office (NRO): Demonstrated experience navigating new business opportunities to include shaping and capture.

• U.S. Space Force (USSF) Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAE): Direct familiarity with Space Systems Command (SSC) funding profiles, service-level budget execution, current acquisitions and future plans.

• Space Development Agency (SDA): Technical and programmatic literacy regarding Tranche Transport and Tracking Layers.

Core Competencies

• Disruptive Value Selling: Ability to sell highly agile, software-defined, and rapidly manufactured proliferated LEO (p-LEO) solutions against multi-billion-dollar legacy exquisite architectures.

• Multi-INT Fluency: Comfort articulating the joint concept of operations (CONOPS) pairing high-accuracy SAR mission solutions and machine-to-machine (M2M) tasking.

• Ecosystem Navigation: Fluency with military digital hubs and tactical data architectures (e.g., TITAN, Aegis, F-35) to advocate for edge-processing solutions.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first year, you will:

• Build and qualify a robust pipeline of strategic opportunities.

• Establish ICEYE as a trusted mission partner within key defense and intelligence organizations beyond data sales.

• Create repeatable capture and business development processes that scale with company growth.

• Influence future product strategy through direct customer engagement.

• Secure meaningful contract wins that accelerate ICEYE's position in the U.S. national security market.

Pay Range and Compensation Package

• The estimated base salary range for this role is $180k- $220k depending on experience

• Other benefits include health coverage, flexible PTO, a friendly work environment, plus extra fun perks!

Physical Requirements

This position primarily works in an office environment. It requires the ability to sit or stand for long periods of time and frequent walking. Daily use of a computer, phone, office equipment and other computing and digital devices is required. Some travel may be necessary – the ability to travel by car, plane, train, bus, vessel, or metro, operate a motor vehicle and maintain a valid Driver’s License and/or effectively navigate public transportation i