Vice President of Sales

CANDA Solutions•Columbia, MD

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

As CANDA Solutions continues to scale operations and expand its presence across federal, defense, and international markets, we are seeking a high-performing, strategically disciplined Vice President, Sales to generate new sales, develop new partnerships with Value-Added Resellers (VARs) build a capture management function and create accurate sales forecasting tools. This role is a critical member of the go-to-market leadership team and will be responsible for transforming CANDA's sales efforts from founder-led into a scalable, repeatable, and high-performing growth engine across domestic and international markets. This is a player-coach role. In the near term, the VP, Sales will serve as CANDA's primary business sales closer by personally driving opportunity identification, capture execution, and contract wins while simultaneously building a sales infrastructure, processes, and playbooks that will support a growing team over time. As the organization scales, this leader will transition into a team-building and coaching role, recruiting, developing, and managing a high-accountability Sales team aligned to CANDA's growth targets. The ideal candidate combines strategic architectural thinking with proven hands-on sales execution and a deep domain knowledge and experience with federal contracting, defense, and international sales & business development environments. This position reports directly to the Chief Operating Officer.

Requirements

10+ years of federal, defense, or international sales and capture management experience with measurable, documented win results.
Experience in national security, defense technology, or federal IT markets with established agencies and partner relationships required.
Demonstrated track record of winning contracts and building pipelines.
Proven ability to build and scale sales infrastructure and capture processes in a high-growth and/or early-stage government Software as a Service (SaaS) environment.
Hands-on CRM proficiency (HubSpot, Salesforce or equivalent) as a core pipeline management and forecasting tool.
Proven ability to coach, develop, and earn trust with sales professionals, customers, partners and internal cross-functional teams.
Strong communicator and organizational leader; effective influencing without formal authority in a distributed or non-hierarchical structure.
Comfort operating with ambiguity is essential as the team and processes are developed.
Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally as required to develop and maintain key client, agency, and partner relationships.
Located in or able to commute to the Baltimore/DC metro area, preferred.

Nice To Haves

Active U.S. security clearance preferred or ability to obtain US security clearance; Top Secret (TS) highly desirable.
Background in international government contracting or multi-jurisdictional regulatory environments.
Familiarity with CMMC, ITAR, FAR/DFARS, or other federal and defense compliance frameworks.
Demonstrated experience implementing or scaling a standardized capture or sales methodology in a growing SaaS company.
Familiarity with GovCon pricing, teaming strategies, and competitive positioning in the defense and federal IT marketplace.

Responsibilities

Define and execute CANDA's sales strategy aligned to near-and long-term revenue targets.
Build a structured pipeline across federal, defense, and international sectors.
Identify, prioritize and close high-value opportunities, partnerships, and markets.
Drive opportunity identification, qualification, capture planning, proposal execution, and contract negotiation as CANDA's primary Sales professional in the near term.
Build and maintain a robust pipeline of federal, defense, and international opportunities; deliver accurate forecasts with clear visibility into pipeline health, risk, and confidence levels.
Develop win strategies, teaming arrangements, partner agreements and competitive positioning.
Architect and implement capture frameworks, governance models, tools, and processes across the sales lifecycle from opportunity identification through contract award and delivery.
Develop and implement standardized capture process; contribute to the development of playbooks, qualification standards, proposal frameworks, and objection-handling approaches that will scale with the team.
Establish disciplined pipeline management, forecasting, and reporting framework.
Institutionalize win/loss reviews and continuous process improvement to raise organizational win rates over time.
Develop and implement a competitive sales commission structure to attract & retain top sales talent and provides incentives to achieve and exceed assigned quotas.
Recruit, mentor, and develop high-performing sales professionals through structured 1:1, deal reviews, and performance coaching as the team is built.
Build a high-accountability, mission-first culture focused on collaboration, execution discipline, and continuous improvement.
Identify performance gaps early; implement targeted development plans and maintain consistent standards across the team.
Support the evolution of CANDA's sales organizational structure and leadership capability as growth milestones are achieved.
Lead cross-functional alignment across Product, Marketing, Leadership, and Delivery into a unified capture engine.
Partner with Marketing to drive competitive intelligence, demand generation, and go-to-market messaging aligned to target federal agencies and international clients.
Ensure clean handoffs to Delivery teams with well-scoped, winnable work that protects client satisfaction and future revenue.
Establish and maintain effective partnerships, and closely collaborate with internal leaders, functions, and key employees to achieve operations and financial objectives.