Business Development Director (DACH)

What You’ll Do

• Build and lead senior business development for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, covering armed forces, procurement authorities, security agencies and industrial partners.
• Open and hold senior access at BMVg, BAAINBw, Bundeswehr commands, national agencies and NATO bodies, in close coordination with Destinus government relations.
• Shape future demand: translate what customers and users actually need into requirements input the capability teams can build against.
• Run capture for DACH opportunities from qualification through to first customer commitment, together with Commercial on the commercial shape and with Engineering on what is technically achievable.
• Build, lead and develop a team of business developers, and set the standard for how Destinus shows up in front of German customers.
• Work as one commercial motion with the Commercial organisation: one CRM, one pipeline, every opportunity visible to everyone who needs it.
• Own joint account plans for the key DACH accounts
• Feed a clear and honest view of the DACH market back into portfolio and capability decisions.

Requirements

What You’ll Need

• Substantial senior business development or capture experience in defence, security or adjacent deep technology, with a record of closing first commitments.
• Deep working knowledge of German defence procurement: how requirements form, how budget lines come about, how tenders and framework contracts run, and where decisions are actually made.
• An established senior network across BMVg, BAAINBw, the Bundeswehr, national agencies, research organisations and German industry.
• The ability to hold your own in a technical discussion and to bring engineers into a customer conversation at the right moment.
• Proven ability to deliver in a matrix organisation, building strong working relationships across commercial, engineering and programme teams.
• Experience building, leading and developing small senior teams, including hiring.
• Aerospace and defence industry experience is mandatory.
• Fluency in English and German is required.

Who You Are

You are comfortable being early. This is a build role in a young organisation, and much of the structure around you will be created as you go. You are a translator by instinct, between operator and engineer, between customer need and product concept, between Germany and a European group. You qualify hard and early, and you are straight with colleagues and customers about what you see. You enjoy the matrix and you bring people from other functions with you. You hold yourself to what you promised a customer, and you travel to be in the room when it matters.

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Source: Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), table; dl-de/by-2-0; StarIn's calculation

Posted Nov 01, 2026

Posted Nov 01, 2026