Job Title: Business Development Director
Location: Niagara Falls, NY
Employment Type: Direct Placement
Industry: Defense and Space Manufacturing industry
Compensation: Up to $150K/yr. **Based on experience + 25% Bonus
Schedule: 40 hours/week (M-F Business Hours **Onsite + 40% Travel)
About the Opportunity:
- The Business Development Director will be responsible for identifying, qualifying, and winning strategic opportunities; building customer relationships; leading complex proposal efforts; and developing a sustainable sales pipeline that supports the overall growth of the company.
- This person will serve as a major driving influence on company strategy, market expansion, customer selection, and long-term revenue development.
Why You'll Love Working Here:
- Supportive, team-driven culture that values collaboration, transparency, and accountability
- Opportunity to grow your career with a global workforce solutions leader serving multiple industries
- People-first environment that encourages employees to bring their authentic selves to work
- Strong focus on partnership, innovation, and delivering meaningful results for clients and candidates
Why This Opportunity is Exciting:
This role offers the chance to join a company that prioritizes both people and performance-where your contributions directly impact client success while giving you room to grow and develop professionally.
About Acara Solutions
Acara is a premier recruiting and workforce solutions provider-we help companies compete for talent. With a legacy of experience across industries worldwide, we partner with clients, listen to their needs, and customize visionary talent solutions that drive the business outcomes they seek. We leverage decades of experience to deliver contingent staffing, direct placement, executive search, and workforce services worldwide.
Sound like a good fit?
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What You'll Do:
- Develop and execute a strategic business-development plan for the company's aerospace and defense markets.
- Identify, qualify, and pursue new opportunities involving carbon, graphite, ceramic, and other high-temperature materials.
- Build and maintain senior-level relationships with aerospace and defense prime contractors, launch companies, missile-system manufacturers, solid rocket motor producers, government organizations, and strategic suppliers.
- Develop relationships across engineering, procurement, supply-chain, program-management, operations, and executive organizations.
- Expand the company's presence with established prime contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, RTX, L3Harris, SpaceX, and Blue Origin.
- Pursue emerging and high-growth defense and space companies, including Anduril, X-Bow, Castelion, Ursa Major, and other relevant market participants.
- Identify opportunities associated with new missile programs, solid rocket motor programs, hypersonic systems, space-launch vehicles, spacecraft, reentry systems, and advanced thermal-protection applications.
- Convert technical capabilities into compelling customer value propositions focused on performance, reliability, schedule, manufacturability, supply assurance, and total cost.
- Establish annual sales goals, pipeline targets, account plans, and opportunity priorities.
- Maintain accurate forecasts and communicate business-development activity, risks, and expected bookings to executive leadership.
- Serve as the primary commercial contact for assigned strategic accounts and target markets.
- Develop account strategies and customer-engagement plans for key aerospace and defense organizations.
- Monitor customer programs, funding priorities, procurement activity, technology-development efforts, and supplier requirements.
- Identify customer pain points involving material performance, lead times, qualification, domestic sourcing, capacity, quality, or supply-chain risk.
- Position the company as a responsive, technically capable, and strategically important supplier.
- Coordinate customer visits, technical presentations, capability briefings, trade-show participation, and executive-level meetings.
- Develop market intelligence regarding competitors, customer requirements, material technologies, program timing, and potential acquisition targets.
- Represent the company at industry conferences, supplier days, government-industry events, and other business-development activities.
- Build relationships with engineering design teams and influence material and component specifications early in the program cycle.
- Lead or coordinate the preparation of complex, multi-million-dollar proposals and strategic bids.
- Develop capture strategies, win themes, competitive assessments, pricing approaches, teaming strategies, and proposal schedules.
- Coordinate proposal development with Engineering, Operations, Quality, Finance, Supply Chain, Contracts, and executive leadership.
- Executive-level position with regular interaction with customers, suppliers, company leadership, and cross-functional teams.
- Frequent travel to customer facilities, prime-contractor locations, industry conferences, supplier events, and company sites.
- Work may involve proprietary, export-controlled, classified-adjacent, or otherwise sensitive aerospace and defense information.
- The successful candidate must comply with all company policies regarding confidentiality, export controls, information security, customer requirements, and ethical business conduct.
- Periodic visits to manufacturing and high-temperature processing
- Translate customer requirements and statements of work into clear, achievable, and commercially competitive proposals.
- Establish proposal strategies that accurately communicate the company's capabilities in carbon, graphite, ceramics, thermal protection, and high-temperature processing.
- Review technical, commercial, contractual, pricing, schedule, and risk elements before proposal submission.
- Lead negotiations involving pricing, terms and conditions, technical commitments, delivery schedules, qualification requirements, and long-term production expectations.
- Support contract award, customer onboarding, program launch, and transition from business development into execution.
- Ensure that customer commitments are clearly understood and achievable by the organization.
- Provide executive leadership with recommendations regarding market priorities, customer investments, capital requirements, capacity expansion, and technology development.
- Help define the company's long-term growth strategy in aerospace, defense, missile, rocket-motor, and space-launch markets.
- Identify opportunities to increase share of wallet within existing accounts and diversify the company's customer base.
- Recommend strategic partnerships, joint-development opportunities, licensing arrangements, acquisitions, and other growth initiatives.
- Work with technical and operations leadership to align the company's capabilities with evolving customer and market requirements.
- Establish a disciplined business-development process, including opportunity tracking, pipeline reviews, account planning, and forecast management.
- Support development of marketing materials, capability statements, presentations, website content, customer case studies, and executive communications.
- Mentor and help develop other sales and business-development personnel as the organization grows.
What You'll Bring:
- Bachelor's Degree in Business or Engineering or Marketing
- 6+ years of experience in aerospace and defense business development, strategic sales, capture management, or related commercial leadership.
- 6+ years of experience in developing and closing large, technically complex opportunities.
- 6+ years of experience in writing, coordinating, and presenting multi-million-dollar proposals.
What Sets You Apart:
- Demonstrated success selling materials, components, structures, propulsion products, thermal-protection systems, or other high-performance products to aerospace and defense customers.
- Established relationships with major aerospace and defense prime contractors, missile-system manufacturers, solid rocket motor companies, launch providers, or relevant Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers.
- Familiarity with emerging defense and space companies and their procurement, engineering, and supplier-development processes.
- Demonstrated ability to manage long sales cycles involving technical qualification, customer testing, source selection, contracting, and production ramp-up.
- Strong understanding of aerospace and defense procurement, program development, supplier qualification, and customer approval processes.
- Excellent executive communication, presentation, negotiation, and relationship-building skills.
- Ability to understand and communicate technical concepts involving carbon, graphite, ceramics, composites, thermal protection, and high-temperature applications.
- Experience selling carbon, graphite, ceramic, carbon-carbon, ceramic-matrix, or other high-temperature materials and components.
- Experience supporting missile, solid rocket motor, hypersonic, space-launch, spacecraft, reentry, or thermal-protection programs.
- Existing relationships with propulsion, thermal-protection, structures, materials, engineering, sourcing, and program-management organizations.
- Experience with government-funded development programs, prototype projects, Other Transaction Authority agreements, research contracts, or production contracts.
- Familiarity with Department of Defense and aerospace prime-contractor supplier requirements.
- Knowledge of AS9100, ITAR, export controls, cybersecurity requirements, quality requirements, and other aerospace and defense compliance obligations.
- Experience with CRM, ERP, proposal-management, and sales-forecasting systems.
- Technical education or experience in materials science, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, ceramics, composites, or manufacturing.
- Experience selling products that require customer qualification, first-article approval, process validation, or long-term production approval.
Additional Information:
- Upon offer of employment, the individual will be subject to a background check
- Under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), all employees assigned to this client must provide documentation verifying their status as a 'U.S. Person', as defined in ITAR clause 120.15. A U.S. Person is a protected individual under the anti-discrimination provisions of U.S. immigration laws
- Ability to travel regularly to customers, suppliers, conferences, and company locations.
After you apply, you may receive a call or message from our AI Talent Scout about this role or other opportunities that match your skills and preferences.
AI agent role is to help speed up your hiring process by answering questions, confirming basic information, and identifying whether there's a mutual fit.
The call or chat may be recorded so that our recruiting team can review it - they make all final hiring decisions, while
AI agent simply helps move you forward faster. The best part?
They are available 24/7, so you can connect whenever it's convenient for you.
By applying for this job, you agree to receive calls, AI-generated calls, text messages, or emails from Acara Solutions and its affiliates, and contracted partners. Frequency varies for text messages. Message and data rates may apply. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. You can reply STOP to cancel and HELP for help. You can access our privacy policy at Website Privacy Policy | Acara
Aleron companies (Acara Solutions, Aleron Shared Resources, Broadleaf Results, Lume Strategies, TalentRise, Viaduct) are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Race/Color/Gender/Religion/National Origin/Disability/Veteran.
Applicants for this position must be legally authorized to work in the United States. This position does not meet the employment requirements for individuals with F-1 OPT STEM work authorization status.
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Aleron
Nov 05, 2026