Business Development Manager

Business Development Manager

Astroscale

Harwell, United Kingdom

Astroscale is seeking to employ a motivated Business Development Manager, primarily to support institutional opportunities, at our UK office based in the Harwell Space Cluster. This is an exciting and unique opportunity to join a dynamic company seeking to make a positive contribution to the growing problem of orbital debris that endangers humanity’s continued use of space. 

The successful candidate will report to the Director of Business Development (BD) and Product within the BD team, will develop bids and secure funding for Astroscale UK, and will support in a number of BD-related areas including proposal production and capture management for institutional bids. 

Astroscale's work environment is fast-paced and dynamic, with plenty of opportunities to learn and contribute. This role would suit someone with past experience in bids or sales in the space sector, who wishes to grow responsibility in the space BD area, or someone with technical space experience, such as systems engineering, looking to move into a more commercial role.

Responsibilities  

Capture Management 

• Keep track of bid opportunities including sources such as European Space Agency (ESA), European Union (EU), UK Space Agency (UKSA) and make propositions as to what future projects fit which opportunities;
• Maintain a database of future projects suitable for different bid types and opportunities, and work with the business team to support prioritisation of projects and R&D, feeding into service and capability strategy;
• Work with business analysis team to evolve customer and competitor analyses;
• Support with development of financial inputs to government (and ESA) budgets supporting funding allocation to key programmes.  Support programme financial estimation. 

Bid Production

• Take responsibility for managing and coordinating entire bids, or parts of bids as required, through the bid process from call opening all the way to bid submission (leading or supporting negotiation as needed);
• Control overall production of the bid volumes to ensure delivery on schedule;
• Draw on other relevant teams in Astroscale (as needed for larger bids), including: projects, engineering, procurement & contractual, finance, business analysis teams, and independently taking initiative for smaller bids;
• Ensure bid execution according to bid Product Assurance/Quality Assurance philosophy; conduct bid/no bid reviews and later stage bid reviews (e.g. gold/red team) as appropriate, conduct win-theme analysis;
• Control bid finances, working with finance team and with external partners on multi-partner/consortium-style to assign/control finances;
• Coordinating partner inputs (scope, finances), with procurement team as needed, for multi-partner/consortium-style bids. 

BD/Commercial Activities 

• Support BD events and conferences, end-customer customer-facing engagements (commercial or institutional) and partner engagement for key partners;
• Support account management efforts with UKSA (UK Space Agency) or ESA (European Space Agency) as directed, specifically around IOS (In-Orbit Servicing) activities; 
• Support to policy-style engagements that BD team is involved in;
• Support the Product Development team in defining new and/or iterative Products and Services.

Essential Skills 

• Minimum 2 – 4 years’ experience working in bid management in the space industry, with a preference for those with experience of the full lifecycle of UK Space Agency (UKSA) or European Space Agency bids e.g. Space Safety, Space Transportation, ARTES, GSTP, ITTs, UKSA programmes, or sales experience of products or services. 
• Excellent understanding of UKSA ecosystem, UKSA member states or other member state discussions and negotiations;
• Significant experience working with UKSA or ESA on space programmes;
• An excellent “sales/marketing style” in bid production which can be used to convey the selling points of the business, and to construct competitive but deliverable bids and commercial proposals;
• Strong commercial awareness;
• Self-motivated, proactive, and willing to take initiative;
• Excellent interpersonal, organizational, and written/verbal communication skills including to both technical and non-technical audiences; 
• Strong understanding of the space industry and ecosystem, specifically around IOS activities;
• Passionate about space with knowledge of the space environment and space debris. 

Desirable skills

• Postgraduate degree; 
• Technical knowledge of spacecraft systems (upstream and space segment preferable); 
• Experience of bidding into the following domains: in-orbit servicing, active debris removal, space situational awareness. Space segment bid capacity desirable, ground segment bid capacity also useful but not essential;
• Experience of working on bids of various different sizes, from 1 to 2 pager propositions for expressions of interest, to small R&D bids, to larger mission/service proposals of hundreds of pages;
• Experience of delivering/compiling key volumes for bids: technical, commercial, financial, implementation, management, contractual, risk;
• Understanding of project management of space programmes, or some past experience in this area;
• Experience of ESA bid financials including Procedures, Specification and Standards (PSS) form generation;
• Experience of working in a satellite business development or satellite sales environment.