Business Development Operations Manager

sesengin•Reston, VA

About The Position

This role owns the business development operating rhythm, pipeline and forecast discipline, CRM workflows, internal tooling, and cross-functional execution needed to help Business Development Managers close deals. You will translate BD priorities into measurable action across Business Development, Product, Marketing, Finance, Contracts, Legal, Engineering, Operations, and senior leadership; remove friction from capture and proposal workflows; deliver decision-ready reporting; and create structure in a fast-moving environment serving DoD, Intelligence Community, Civil agency, and commercial space stakeholders. Support expansion and growth of the business base by maintaining current SATCOM customers and developing new customer relationships within emerging space markets including hosted payloads, space situational awareness (SSA), remote sensing missions, data architectures, hybrid networks, and next‑generation space systems.

Requirements

8+ years of combined experience across business development operations, capture/sales support, and federal-sector program support.
3+ years supporting U.S. Federal, DoD, Intelligence Community, Civil agency, or other complex government/public-sector accounts in a BD, operations, capture, or sales enablement capacity.
Hands-on ownership of CRM ecosystems such as Salesforce, including dashboarding, reporting, pipeline hygiene, stage governance, and workflow optimization.
Proven ability to support BDMs or sales leaders in complex deal environments with forecast reviews, opportunity inspection, action tracking, customer-engagement preparation, and proposal/capture support.
Mission-critical leadership experience in a high-accountability environment such as military operations, government contracting, aerospace/space, defense technology, or another high-urgency operating context.
Strong planning, organization, project management, written communication, and presentation skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience in high-growth space, satellite services, remote sensing, RF/data, SATCOM, defense technology, or government-focused technology businesses.
Familiarity with DoD/IC/Civil agency buying cycles, federal acquisition/budgeting processes, capture management, proposal workflows, and customer/partner engagement models.
Prior U.S. military officer or equivalent operational leadership experience with responsibility for readiness, systems, personnel, compliance, and risk management.
Demonstrated measurable impact improving forecast accuracy, pipeline quality, CRM adoption, onboarding/time-to-productivity, retention, campaign conversion, or BD team execution.
Ability to understand and communicate space/government mission context, including satellite operations, hosted payloads, remote sensing, data services, and constellation/mission-architecture concepts; active security clearance or ability to obtain one.

Responsibilities

Owns business development operating cadence with single-threaded accountability for forecast visibility, pipeline hygiene, priority tracking, and executive follow-through.
Creates structure in ambiguous, fast-moving BD environments by translating strategic priorities into processes, dashboards, playbooks, and measurable execution.
Uses CRM systems, data quality standards, and workflow automation to make Salesforce the source of truth for pipeline, capture status, account health, and leadership decisions.
Supports fielded BDMs by streamlining administrative workflows, mitigating internal blockers, coordinating stakeholders, and enabling customer engagements.
Navigates cross-functional dynamics across Product, Marketing, Finance, Contracts, Legal, Engineering, Operations, and leadership to align resources, resolve tradeoffs, and advance deals.
Run weekly and quarterly BD operating cadence, including forecast reviews, pipeline inspection, account reviews, campaign reviews, opportunity follow-up, and action-item closure.
Partner with Business Development Managers and senior leadership to improve bookings forecast accuracy, pipeline coverage, opportunity qualification, capture timing, and portfolio health.
Build and maintain dashboards and executive reporting for revenue, bookings, pipeline, account health, campaign impact, capture progress, bid/proposal status, and resource gaps.
Support BDMs from opportunity identification through qualification, capture planning, proposal support, customer-engagement preparation, pricing/approval coordination, and post-meeting follow-through.
Track off-sites, pipeline deep-dives, customer engagements, trade shows, executive briefings, campaign execution, and strategic initiatives.
Identify process bottlenecks, decision blockers, ownership gaps, and misaligned incentives; recommend improvements and drive adoption without slowing deal velocity.
Maintain disciplined documentation of BD priorities, opportunity status, next steps, dependencies, and leadership decisions so distributed field teams remain aligned.