[Hiring] Associate Director - Investments @saas.group

Role Description

This role is part of our Central M&A Team at saas.group. We're hiring an Associate Director, Investments to sit in the principal seat. You'll report to our Head of M&A, work alongside an existing Associate Director, and have significant exposure to our C-suite. As deal captain, you qualify the opportunity, make the first offer, build the investment case, set the price, negotiate with the founder, run diligence, and take the deal to close.

Your impact in the first 6-12 months will be:

• Own early-stage qualification: take new opportunities from first call to a non-binding offer quickly, kill weak ones early, and turn the strongest into IC-ready investment cases.
• Earn the trust of founders, our C-suite, and the operating teams who will run the businesses you buy.
• Step in as deal captain on your first live transactions and drive them from LOI to signed SPA.

Your responsibilities include:

• Capital allocation: Underwrite every deal you lead. Form a clear view on value, risk, and returns, write the investment memo, and defend your recommendation in front of our Investment Committee.
• Qualification and offers: Qualify new opportunities fast, kill weak ones early, and issue non-binding offers on the ones worth pursuing. You set the price and structure that frame the deal all the way to LOI.
• Deal captaincy: Own the process end to end, from first call and non-binding offer through LOI, diligence, and SPA to closing. You set the timeline, run the workstreams, and own the outcome.
• Commercial due diligence: Lead our in-house CDD. Size the market, map the competition, define the right to win, and get to the truth on quality of revenue: retention, concentration, pricing power, and the durability of growth.
• Financial and commercial modelling: Build models from a blank sheet: ARR bridges, cohort and retention analysis, unit economics, scenarios, valuation, and returns.
• Negotiation: Lead negotiations with founders and their advisors on price, structure, and key terms, landing deals that work for the seller and for our returns.
• Diligence leadership: Run the full DD process across internal experts (finance, tech, product, marketing, legal, people) and external legal, financial, and tax advisors, and turn their findings into decisions.
• Stakeholder leadership: Represent saas.group to sellers, brokers, and advisors, and work hand in hand with our C-suite, leadership, and the operators who take over after closing.
• Coaching: Develop the junior members of the team as a hands-on player-coach.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional experience after university, with a strong track record in transactions, strategy, or both.
• Training at a top-tier firm or team in one or more of:
• Private equity: lower mid-market transactions, typically sub-$10M EBITDA, ideally in software or tech-enabled services.
• Strategy consulting: MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) or leading strategy firms such as Roland Berger, Oliver Wyman, Kearney, L.E.K. Consulting, OC&C, Simon-Kucher or Arthur D. Little.
• Big Four strategy and deals: Strategy& (PwC), EY-Parthenon, Deloitte (Monitor Deloitte / M&A) or KPMG Deal Advisory, especially in commercial due diligence.
• Corporate development / in-house M&A: ideally at a high-velocity aggregator or buy-and-build strategic.
• Investment banking: M&A advisory at mid-market or tech-focused boutique banks, ideally on lower mid-market transactions with enterprise values below $50M.
• An investor's mindset: you think like an owner, form a point of view quickly, and back it with numbers.
• Live deal experience: you know what it takes to get a deal over the line, and ideally you've led workstreams or been the day-to-day deal lead.
• Excellent financial modelling and valuation skills: you build from a blank sheet and can defend every assumption.
• A player-coach approach: you have experience developing junior talent and enjoy doing it.
• Real commercial due diligence experience: market sizing, competitive analysis, customer and expert interviews, and quality-of-revenue work.
• Presence: you can negotiate with founders selling their life's work and hold your ground with the C-suite and advisors.
• Rigorous project management: you keep multiple parties, timelines, and documents moving without dropping the ball.
• A genuine interest in software and SaaS business models. A software background is an advantage but not a requirement.
• Fluent English, written and spoken; additional European languages are a plus.
• Real AI fluency and the drive to put it to work: you already use AI tools (Claude especially) day to day and look for ways they can speed up research, analysis, modelling, and diligence workflows.

Benefits

• Principal seat, real ownership: You'll lead deals and allocate capital as a principal, not an advisor, then watch the companies you bought grow inside our portfolio.
• Deal flow and exposure: $50M+ deployed every year across two continents, with direct access to our C-suite and Investment Committee from day one.
• Ultimate flexibility: We’re 100% remote. You can work from wherever you like, whenever you like.
• Freedom and autonomy: We’re a high-trust team, and you’ll be given lots of flexibility to solve problems in your own way — with plenty of help from the team when you need it.
• Minimum bureaucracy: We don’t like to get bogged down with meetings and red tape. We like to be efficient and keep momentum steady & sustainable.
• Small & friendly team: We help each other out, have fun, and joke around.
• Our network: We are a community of entrepreneurial SaaS professionals that regularly exchange ideas, knowledge, learning, and expertise with each other internally.
• Flexible time off: We want you to recharge your batteries when needed.
• We don’t just simply offer you to “take a job with us” but rather to “join us on this journey” to build the world's largest platform of independent SaaS companies.