Director, Business Development — Oil & Gas

Saronic Technologies•Houston, TX

About The Position

Saronic Technologies develops autonomous and technology-enabled marine capabilities for maritime operations. The Director, Business Development — Oil & Gas will bring these capabilities to offshore energy customers by connecting customer discovery, product development, and commercial execution. This is a senior, hands-on individual contributor role with executive-level scope and substantial autonomy within agreed commercial priorities and a discovery-led approach. The role owns account strategy and opportunities from the first customer conversation through proposal, negotiation, and contract award. It focuses on offshore energy markets across the Gulf of America and internationally, building relationships with decision-makers, understanding and validating customer needs, developing evidence-based business cases, and creating qualified pipeline. The director will collaborate with product and engineering teams to translate validated customer needs into capabilities and specifications, monitor customer evaluations, and provide structured product feedback. The role also maintains evidence-based forecasts and CRM records, reports weekly, and documents repeatable account strategies. Performance targets will be agreed with the Vice President, Commercial in the first weeks, with success measured by access to budget owners, quality of validated customer insight, qualified pipeline creation and progression, and conversion into awards and revenue.

Requirements

15 or more years in offshore oil and gas business development, commercial leadership, logistics, or marine support, with a record of originating and winning complex, multi-stakeholder deals.
A deep, current network among Gulf of America operators and offshore drilling contractors, including established relationships in logistics, marine support, supply chain, and operations.
Demonstrated access to relevant decision-makers and a record of turning trusted relationships into commercial results.
Demonstrated success extending relationships, establishing new contacts, and developing commercial opportunities across international offshore markets.
Practical command of offshore operations, logistics, and marine support, including the costs of service disruptions to an operator.
Experience with discovery-led, consultative selling at senior levels: diagnosing problems, validating impact, building a case for change, and navigating complex buying organizations.
Exceptional listening and questioning skills, including understanding customer motivations, constraints, and concerns, testing assumptions, and confirming understanding before proposing solutions.
Commercial and financial fluency, including total cost of ownership, pricing, margins, and contract structures.
Strong executive communication and negotiation skills.
Self-direction, initiative, urgency, sustained momentum, information sharing, follow-through, and personal accountability for results.
Ability to translate customer needs into clear capability requirements, collaborate with technical teams on specifications and priorities, and use customer feedback to improve products and commercial outcomes.
Practical understanding of how operators and drillers qualify new vendors and technology, including health, safety and environmental (HSE) requirements and technical approval processes, and ability to navigate these processes with customer and internal teams.
Ability to work through ambiguity, build a new commercial market, and adapt as evidence and priorities evolve.
Ability to build credibility in both boardroom and vessel-deck settings.

Nice To Haves

An MBA or relevant advanced degree.
Working experience applying Gap Selling and Level 5 listening, including tactical empathy and seeing situations from the customer's point of view.
Experience commercializing new marine technology or building new offshore service models.

Responsibilities

Develop a focused market and account plan, prioritizing customers whose offshore needs align with Saronic's capabilities across the Gulf of America and international markets.
Use industry relationships to access logistics leaders, marine managers, operations executives, procurement leaders, and budget owners, and build multiple relationships within target accounts.
Lead structured discovery to establish customers' current state, underlying problems, business impact, and desired future state before proposing solutions.
Build business cases for change based on evidence validated by customers.
Convert discovery findings into qualified opportunities with named stakeholders, mapped decision processes, identified funding paths and timelines, and mutually agreed next steps.
Own opportunities through proposal, negotiation, customer evaluations against defined success criteria, and contract award.
Work with technical product and engineering teams to translate customer discovery into capability requirements and product specifications, keeping customer needs and business economics central to product decisions.
Monitor customer evaluations against agreed success criteria and provide product teams with structured feedback on performance, capability gaps, and adoption barriers.
Bring validated product improvements back to customers without making unsupported commitments.
Keep CRM information current, forecast from evidence, report concisely each week, and discontinue opportunities that are no longer supported by evidence.
Document and share successful account strategies, adapting them to regional buying practices and customer approval processes.
Navigate customer and internal processes for qualifying new vendors and technology, including HSE requirements and technical approvals.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical insurance; Saronic pays 100% of the employee premium and 80% of dependent premiums.
Dental and vision insurance; Saronic pays 100% of the employee premium under the basic plan and 80% of dependent premiums.
Generous paid time off and holidays.
Paid maternity and paternity leave.
Competitive salary with opportunities for performance-based bonuses.
401(k) plan with company match.
Stock options.
Basic life insurance and short- and long-term disability coverage.
Discounted pet insurance options, including a 24/7 Telehealth helpline.
Free lunch benefit and unlimited free drinks and snacks in the office.