Commercial Chief Growth Officer (CGO)

Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM)•Pittsburgh, PA

About The Position

The Commercial Chief Growth Officer is responsible for defining, validating, and executing ARM’s commercial growth strategy. The role builds a repeatable business-development engine to help U.S. manufacturers adopt robotics and AI through Automation Assessments, solution-development engagements, consortium-enabled delivery models, and related workforce offerings. The position’s central mandate is to clarify ARM’s commercial game plan: identify markets and customer problems where ARM can compete effectively, define compelling and scalable commercial offers, establish routes to market, develop strategic partnerships, and convert early traction into a durable revenue pipeline. The CGO will initially emphasize market discovery and offer development, then scale customer acquisition and account growth. Commercial business-development and marketing resources should focus primarily on a small number of validated priority verticals while retaining limited capacity for high-value opportunistic pursuits. The role works closely with technical, program, membership, marketing, workforce, defense, contracts, and finance teams. Success is evaluated through commercial revenue and pipeline growth, customer acquisition and expansion, effective and repeatable offers, partnerships, and measurable customer outcomes from robotics and AI adoption.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
25+ years of progressive experience in commercial business development, strategic sales, market development, consulting, or growth leadership in industrial technology, manufacturing, automation, robotics, AI, systems integration, or a closely related field.
Demonstrated success creating or scaling a commercial offering, market segment, or go-to-market motion, rather than solely managing an established sales territory.
Strong understanding of manufacturer buying processes and the operational, technical, financial, and workforce factors influencing automation and digital-transformation decisions.
Demonstrated ability to build executive relationships, discover customer needs, shape solutions, negotiate complex services engagements, and close revenue.
Experience working across technical, operations, delivery, marketing, finance, and legal/contracts teams.
Strong analytical, written, verbal, presentation, and stakeholder-management skills.
Willingness and ability to travel for customer, partner, consortium, and industry engagements.

Nice To Haves

Experience selling consulting, engineering, integration, transformation, or managed-service engagements to industrial customers.
Experience in one or more industrial verticals, such as defense and aerospace, agriculture, construction, transportation, metals, food and beverage, consumer goods, or other discrete or process manufacturing sectors.
Experience building partner ecosystems, channel relationships, or consortium-based delivery models.
Experience with CRM discipline, opportunity qualification, account planning, forecast management, and metrics-driven sales leadership.
Familiarity with workforce-development needs associated with automation deployment.
Experience in a mission-driven, nonprofit, membership, public-private partnership, or innovation-institute environment.

Responsibilities

Lead development of ARM’s commercial growth strategy, including target-market selection, customer segmentation, value propositions, routes to market, pricing hypotheses, and revenue targets.
Conduct and synthesize market research to recommend high-potential commercial verticals beyond defense and aerospace, considering automation need, manufacturing concentration, purchasing capacity, adoption barriers, addressable customer base, and fit with ARM capabilities.
Translate market findings into a commercial operating plan with prioritized accounts, partner strategy, marketing requirements, sales stages, conversion assumptions, and resource needs.
Establish criteria for pursuing opportunities directly, delivering through consortium members, managing on customers’ behalf, referring to partners, or declining.
Build and maintain a commercial pipeline balanced across near-term revenue, strategic lighthouse customers, repeatable offerings, and longer-term growth opportunities.
Own the evolution and commercialization of Automation Assessments as ARM’s commercial entry offer.
Define a customer journey from initial engagement through assessment, recommendations, solution sourcing or design, implementation support, workforce enablement, and follow-on services.
Partner with technical and program leaders to package offerings addressing manufacturer needs, including automation opportunity identification, business-case development, robotics and AI roadmaps, solution sourcing, pilot or prototype management, workforce-readiness planning, and implementation support.
Develop commercial packaging, scope templates, pricing approaches, statements of work, and delivery handoffs that make offerings understandable, purchasable, and repeatable.
Test and refine service concepts with early customers, using win/loss feedback, delivery results, and customer outcomes to improve positioning and offer design.
Identify suitable recurring or scalable revenue models, such as subscriptions, licensing, strategic partnerships, sponsorships, or productized services, aligned with ARM’s mission and capabilities.
Build senior relationships with executives and operational leaders at target commercial manufacturers and industrial companies.
Lead account planning for priority prospects and customers, including stakeholder mapping, customer challenges, relationship-development plans, pursuit strategy, and expansion opportunities.
Lead consultative sales conversations connecting robotics and AI adoption to outcomes such as productivity, quality, labor availability, resilience, throughput, safety, and competitiveness.
Develop and lead proposals, commercial scopes, presentations, and negotiations with technical, programmatic, contracts, and finance teams.
Serve as executive sponsor or commercial lead for strategic accounts as appropriate, ensuring effective transition from business development to delivery and ongoing customer growth.
Develop methods for leveraging the ARM Consortium as a differentiated commercial asset while preserving customer trust, fair opportunity, and clear commercial roles.
Build strategic partnerships that extend reach, generate referrals, improve delivery capacity, or strengthen ARM’s credibility in priority verticals.
Partner with Membership to recruit and engage organizations that improve ARM’s ability to serve target commercial markets.
Partner with CSO on market-specific messaging, thought leadership, customer stories, events, and campaigns that generate qualified demand.
Coordinate with CTO to incorporate engineering and program-management solutions into commercial customer engagements.
Coordinate with CWO to incorporate workforce-readiness and talent solutions into commercial customer engagements when relevant.
Coordinate with the Defense CGO to identify and pursue dual-use opportunities.
Provide the leadership team with regular, evidence-based recommendations on commercial priorities, investments, risks, and required organizational decisions.