[Hiring] Business Development Lead @Shearwater Aerospace

Role Description

A hands-on, field-based business development role. You make the calls, take the trips, and run the meetings. You are the bridge between Smart Flight™ and the defense UAV operators who fly. Your job: get into the field, put the product in front of operators, learn how they really plan and fly missions, and feed that ground truth straight into the product.

Qualifications

• Credibility with UAS operators, earned one of two ways: you have planned or flown real missions yourself (military or civil), or you have spent years selling or supporting a comparable product to the people who do.
• An existing network in the US defense UAS community that you can start working in week one.
• Day-one fluency: you know the acronyms, the culture, and who to call.
• Demonstrated self-directed outreach: in some prior context, you built a contact list from nothing and worked it.
• Comfortable with rejection, follow-up discipline, and meticulous contact tracking.
• Willing and able to travel across the US and to Canada; US Person.
• Writes clearly and fast; your notes are our product input.

Requirements

• 30–50% travel (US, with travel to Canada: test ranges, operator sites, defense UAS events).
• Run discovery conversations, solo or with founders, using our interview guide.
• Run structured product evaluations: put SFP in front of operators, watch them plan a real mission with it.
• Represent Shearwater at defense UAS events, ranges, and exercises.
• Write a short after-action report on every conversation and evaluation.
• Maintain contact and organization records with discipline.
• Secure return engagements; an operator who comes back is our strongest signal.
• Flag patterns weekly: pains heard repeatedly, workflow surprises, competing tools, requested capabilities.

Benefits

• USD $130,000–$170,000 base depending on network depth and proven selling record, plus meaningful early-stage equity.
• Commission on closed business — target 2–5%, structure agreed before you start.
• Full travel expenses covered.
• A 3–6 month contract-to-hire structure is on the table for candidates who prefer to de-risk mutually.

Career path

• Phase 1 — Field discovery (roughly 1–2 quarters).
• Phase 2 — Commercial ownership.
• The transition is evidence-triggered, not calendar-triggered.

Who you'll work with

• Defense services contractors and operators-for-hire (ISR, range support, flight test crews).
• Military and military-adjacent UAS units and their support ecosystem.
• Ops managers and mission planners inside those organizations.

Who won't fit

• You have never worked directly with UAS operators, whether flying alongside them or selling to them.
• People who tell us what we want to hear.
• Part-time consultants; this is a full-contact, on-the-road job.
• Anyone expecting to direct the work rather than do it.

How we'll hire

• Intro call with the founders (fit, background, your network).
• Sourcing exercise (48 hours): given our target segment, bring back 15 named organizations, 5 named individuals, and your first-touch approach for 3 of them.
• Deep-dive with both founders, including a mock discovery conversation.
• References from operators you have flown with, supported, or sold to, not managers.