Sr. Director, Corporate Development

Noblis • Reston, VA

2h

About The Position

We are seeking a high-velocity, full-lifecycle Corporate Development executive to lead enterprise-wide strategy and execution across:
Mergers & Acquisitions
Strategic Ventures & Business Investments
Intellectual Property Commercialization & Monetization
This leader will architect, source, structure, negotiate, and integrate transactions that accelerate technology differentiation, market expansion, and long-term enterprise value creation. The ideal candidate is energized by frontier technologies, thrives in ambiguity, and can translate innovation into accretive growth. The ideal candidate is a strategic, analytically strong, and hands on mission and execution-oriented leader to drive the company’s inorganic growth strategy and shape the future of our GovCon portfolio. This strategic builder-operator role will lead efforts across M&A, strategic ventures, and inorganic growth-focused partnerships, while ensuring that research and development investments translate into differentiated, mission-aligned‑ solutions.
Reporting to the CEO and working closely with the executive team, this leader will identify, evaluate, and execute opportunities that accelerate scale, expand capabilities, and strengthen our competitive position. This role is accountable for identifying, shaping, and executing transactions that accelerate scale, deepen technology differentiation, expand market access, and strengthen long-term enterprise value. For M&A and Ventures, the role spans the full lifecycle—from proactive target sourcing and technology ecosystem scanning, through rigorous diligence, valuation, structuring, and negotiation, to transaction execution and as needed, early integration planning with M&A. The ideal candidate brings deep familiarity with the GovCon and broader technology ecosystem, a passion for national missions, and the ability to operate in a fastmoving, highly collaborative executive environment.
To accelerate revenue realization, strengthen win probability, and ensure capital deployment decisions directly support sustainable, mission-aligned growth, this role must operate in tight partnership with the CEO responsible for corporate strategy along with the VP of Business Development. This partnership mutually reinforces inorganic and organic growth strategies. This role works with the CEO and CTO to identify capability gaps, technology adjacencies, and market expansion vectors. Business Development (BD) translates those capabilities into pipeline, revenue capture, and customer intimacy. BD informs acquisition and ventures theses with real-time customer demand signals and competitive intelligence, while Corporate Development equips BD with differentiated assets, new venture partnerships and capabilities, and expanded addressable markets.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business, Economics, Engineering, or related field (MBA or equivalent preferred).
• 15+ years of progressive responsibility with 5–10 years of experience in M&A, corporate development, investment banking, private equity, or transaction advisory, with demonstrated GovCon exposure.
• Strong understanding of government contracting business models, contract structures, and regulatory environment.
• Proven experience managing multiple workstreams across complex transactions.
• Advanced financial modeling, valuation, and analytical skills.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with executive presence.
• Strong proficiency in GenAI to accomplish inorganic growth objectives and build a scalable inorganic growth engine.
• US citizenship.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience supporting acquisitions of GovCon services, software, or defense/mission-tech companies.
• Familiarity with DoD, IC, Civilian, or Space sector customers.
• Active or prior security clearance (or eligibility to obtain one).

Responsibilities

• Lead and operationalize the company’s inorganic growth strategy, with primary accountability for M&A execution and strategic venture investing.
• Maintain Noblis’ prioritized acquisition and investment thesis aligned to capability expansion, market adjacency, and long-term enterprise value creation.
• Proactively source and screen targets aligned to corporate strategy, capability expansion, customer adjacency, and longterm vision including managing a dynamic, staged-gate pipeline of acquisition targets and venture opportunities.
• Conduct market landscaping, competitive analysis, and whitespace assessments across priority GovCon segments and deep tech priorities focused on inorganic growth.
• Maintain a robust pipeline of prospective targets across services, technology, software, and mission‑focused platforms.
• Build and sustain relationships with investment banks, brokers, private equity sponsors, and industry executives to ensure early and frequent access to high-quality opportunities.
• Using approved AI tools, establish repeatable sourcing mechanisms and deal-flow channels across both GovCon and tech ecosystem.
• Ensure technical defensibility and competitive moat through architecture and IP strategy including the establishment of governance and performance metrics for IP value creation and technology/ventures ROI.
• In collaboration with legal, finance and the technology office, assess and rationalize the enterprise IP portfolio (patents, data assets, proprietary platforms, trade secrets).
• Develop clear commercialization pathways (licensing, partnerships, spinouts, productization).
• Rigorously evaluate internal R&D investments against strategic enterprise growth priorities, quantify market demand, and determine clear, executable pathways to scalable commercialization and revenue generation.
• Structure monetization models and partnership agreements in collaboration with legal and finance.
• Use approved AI tools to analyze large patent and technical corpora to identify high value patents within a portfolio, detect underutilized or dormant IP, map patent clusters to markets, and conduct benchmarking and risk identification.
• Perform preliminary assessments of targets, including strategic alignment, customer concentration, contract vehicles, backlog quality, and competitive positioning.
• Evaluate GovCon specific attributes such as contract types (CPFF, T&M, FFP), recompete exposure, IDIQ positioning, and agency alignment.
• Prepare executive level investment briefs and recommendations for the CEO and CFO.
• Develop AI-enabled M&A workflow architecture.
• Lead and coordinate cross functional diligence efforts across Finance, HR, IT, Business Operations, and Growth.
• Partner with internal and external advisors to assess quality of earnings, revenue durability, margin sustainability, and risk. Work closely with legal counsel to confirm transaction approach and evaluation.
• Support valuation modeling, deal structuring, synergy analysis, and negotiation preparation.
• Manage data rooms, diligence trackers, and issue resolution through signing and close.
• Utilize approved AI platforms to accelerate diligence cycles.
• Partner with the CEO, CFO, BD, and operating leaders to ensure acquisition and venture theses are informed by customer demand signals, capability gaps, and long-term platform strategy — translating market intelligence into disciplined capital deployment decisions.
• Collaborate with Noblis R&D, engineering, scientific teams and product/solution leadership to assess technical diligence, integration complexity, IP defensibility, and post-transaction value realization for acquisition and investment targets.
• Serve as the internal transaction lead, ensuring timelines, deliverables, and decision gates are met and support post-close integration planning in partnership with Growth, Finance, HR, IT, and Operations.
• Lead cross-functional diligence processes spanning finance, legal, contracts, security, compliance, HR, and IT to ensure comprehensive risk assessment and clean transaction execution.
• In collaboration with the executive team and transition team, implement integration governance frameworks to capture synergies, mitigate disruption, and accelerate value realization post-close.
• Maintain strict confidentiality throughout sourcing, negotiation, and execution phases, ensuring full adherence to governance standards and GovCon regulatory requirements, including novations, OCI mitigation, security clearance considerations, FOCI (Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence) risk assessment, and coordination with national security and investment review processes where foreign investment or capital participation is implicated.

Benefits

• Our offerings include health, life, disability, financial, and retirement benefits, as well as paid leave, professional development, tuition assistance, and work-life programs.
• Noblis has won numerous workplace awards.
• Noblis maintains a drug-free workplace.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive