Account Manager (DSTL) in Amesbury

Global Grade: GG15

Location: Boscombe Down (3dpw on-site)

Role Type: Permanent – Full Time

Role ID: 20666

Salary: £90 - 100k + car allowance + bonus + benefits

Role Purpose

Drive pipeline growth in important domains across a DSTL pipeline of £3bn over three years. Prepare the market and nurture and create new opportunities. Hands-on execution/development of early-stage opportunities, nurturing and developing them to the point that they can be handed over as qualified opportunities to the Capture team. Deliver three Coordinate and collaborate across wider QinetiQ DSTL facing team and wider QinetiQ to help inform our own strategic development, i.e., skills, capabilities, investment, partnerships to implement these opportunities and maximise our returns from them. Ensure coherence in development of these opportunities. Engage across QinetiQ including Client Leads/Capture and Bidding Director/MDs and wider QinetiQ to ensure we are bringing the best we can to bear including through positioning and lily pad deals. Support Strategic Captures & Business Development: drive major capture activities, bids and proposals for high-value programmes. Develop and drive QinetiQ’s Growth Strategy across DSTL. Identify, evaluate, and prioritise new market opportunities and adjacent capabilities across DSTL. Customer & Market Engagement; build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders across UK Ministry of Defence – primarily in Dstl and extending where appropriate to include MSHQ, StratCom, FLCs, and UKDI at 1* level in order to influence our proposal pipeline with Dstl.

Key Accountabilities

• Customer relationship: Lead step-change increase in time spent deployed onto Dstl customer sites and sharing of relationships and knowledge gained across QinetiQ. Through this approach, enhance customer intimacy, threat intelligence and pipeline growth.
• Stakeholder management: build thorough understanding of the appropriate stakeholder chain, organisational construct and ways of working. Coordinate with Client Management re. engagements (also, in collaboration with Strategic Engagement Director) into this community to ensure alignment of messaging across our business.
• Identify future market trends and create competitive advantage through deep understanding of customer missions, emerging threats, and technology landscapes.
• Strategic Planning with DSTL facing Integrated Delivery Teams (Business Units): Develop and agree with the Chief Technology Officer and UK Business Development Directors opportunities to deliver the growth plan in near and long term, consistent with the latest company strategy – including designating, establishing and managing the strategic captures within the Strategic Growth portfolio.
• Growth Leadership: provide collaborative leadership and coordination of all QinetiQ engagements across DSTL. Be a leading contributor with the across Growth, demonstrating company best practice and that it follows this routinely in the execution of all Business Winning activities in this area.
• Support delivery of in-year Dstl sales target and five year pipeline.
• Go to market Strategy: working across internal and external stakeholders develop a coherent Go to market Strategy for major strategic pursuits. This GTM strategy should leverage thorough and in-depth understanding of the client’s own strategy, budget and forecasted spend on future procurements.
• Support Development of QinetiQ strategy: engage with Chief Technology Officer, Business Development Directors and relevant Managing Directors to ensure that QinetiQ’s own strategic growth plans are aligned with those of clients and that we are building skills and capacity necessary to execute on that strategy.
• Capture/Bid Management: engage with UK Intelligence and UK Defence Heads of Capture and Bid Management to ensure that approved Capture plans are in place and are being executed for all major opportunities. Ensure that best practice is applied at all times in the execution of these captures through “hands-on” leadership of all major Captures.
• Forward planning resourcing: Proactively engage with CTO and Sector BDDs and Operations Lead to ensure that there is a clear forward view of the pipeline and resourcing requirements. Ensure that opportunities can be resourced correctly from a Capture/Bid Management and Delivery perspective and that requirements for technical resource from the business are known and understood.
• Wider engagement: Proactively engage with Capture Teams and across QinetiQ to ensure areas of cross collaboration are known and understood. Collaborate with Chief Technology Office to create and leverage alignment between customer- and internally-funded research and development. Maintain visibility of cross collaboration execution plan to ensure that this is known and understood within both UK Sectors and that it is being followed correctly.
• Best Practice: Proactively engage with Group Business Winning Excellence to ensure that all activities follow accepted best practice and that the team is trained in accordance with Company requirements/schedules. Demonstrate leadership in the usage of SAP C4C CRM. Feedback to Group Business Winning Excellence any areas of potential improvements/refinements in best practice or training based upon experience within the Sector of Capture execution.
• Compliance: Ensure all business winning activities are conducted in full compliance to Group business winning policies and procedures. Ensure that Group policies relating to Ethical Trading Policy, Exports and the appointment and use of third-party Commercial Intermediaries are fully complied with.

Key Competencies

• Domain Relevance: Relevant experience of winning business with customers and industrial partners across Defence with particular focus on DSTL. Demonstrated success influencing strategic programmes in a wide range of defence science and technology areas such as sensing, directed energy, Cloud platforms, Edge-computing, Data Engineering, Data Science (including AI), decision support, Quantum navigation and assurance.
• Deep customer knowledge and relationships: ability to provide thought leadership to customers in complex domains (spanning the above) and develop compelling QinetiQ propositions to meet deliver on this thought leadership.
• Wider industry relationships: established relationships at executive level and ability to engage at this level to build partnering strategies and detailed understanding of the competitive terrain.
• Growth Leadership: Proven experience in a strategic growth, capture, or business development role within the defence sector, including science, technology or research sales and ideally working with DSTL. Ability to lead teams of business winning professionals across functional boundaries.
• Business winning: Understanding the defence and security market, including competition, suppliers, customer base and the regulatory environment and winning business (£100M+) contracts with government and industrial customers.
• Account management: Proven experience of managing and enhancing customer relationships and account performance across complex multidisciplinary and multi-domain organisations. Willingness to spend 2 days per week deployed to customer sites in addition to QinetiQ site time.
• Applied commerciality: Deep understanding of how to negotiate and embed innovative commercial approaches that drive best value for money for defence and security sector customers.

Experience & Qualifications

• Proven track record in hands-on development and execution of scale pipeline (up to £1bn) with high conversion rate of orders in year, ideally in DSTL.
• Proven track record in cradle to grave execution of win strategies with demonstrated ability to win competitive tenders (over c£30m).
• Proven track record in the creating business development teams, to enable development and implementation of compelling strategy and winning tender responses.
• Over 10 years’ experience working in Defence and Secure Government environment with particular focus on DSTL. Established network within this community with strong reputation built upon consistent delivery.
• Proven track record of ability to influence across matrixed internal organisational structure in order to harness wider capabilities in the development and implementation of compelling strategy and winning tender responses.
• Technical background with sufficient knowledge of defence science, technology, research and development. Ability to link technology with client business problems and engage confidently with client/internal technical communities.
• Track record in navigation of complex and multi-disciplinary stakeholder communities within customer organisations. Ability to influence and shape decision making at executive levels within the customer community.
• Established network within other commercial organisations that operate within this market with strong reputation built upon trust and mutual respect.
• Track record of enabling diverse organisations to work together across government, industry, academia, SMEs, start-ups and more.
• Security clearances to allow unfettered access to core clients and access to operational requirements and procurement strategies within the above customer communities.

Why Join QinetiQ?

As we continue to grow into new markets around the world, there’s never been a more exciting time to join QinetiQ. The formula for success is our appetite for innovation and having the courage to take on a wide variety of complex challenges.

As a QinetiQ employee, you’ll experience a unique working environment where teams from different backgrounds, disciplines and experience enjoy collaborating widely and openly as we undertake this exciting and rewarding journey. Through effective teamwork, and pulling together, you’ll get to experience what happens when we all share different perspectives, blend disciplines, and link technologies; constantly discovering new ways of solving complex problems in a diverse and inclusive environment where you can be authentic, feel valued and realise your full potential. Visit our website to read more about our diverse and inclusive workplace culture.

Our Benefits

• Matched contribution pension scheme, with life assurance
• Competitive holiday allowance, with the option to purchase additional days
• Options to join Health Cash Plan, Private Medical Insurance and Dental Insurance
• Employee discount portal: Personal Accident Insurance, Travel Insurance, Restaurants, Cinema Tickets and much more
• We are proud to support the Armed Forces community by honouring the Armed Forces Covenant and maintaining our Gold Award standard in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme
• Volunteering Opportunities - helping charities and local community

Our Recruitment Process:

Please note that applications are reviewed as they are received, so we encourage early applications. This vacancy will be closed when sufficient suitable applications are received.

We want to make sure that our recruitment process is as inclusive as possible and we aspire to bring out the best in our candidates by creating an environment where everyone feels valued, heard and supported. If you have a disability or health condition that may affect your performance in certain assessment types, please speak to your Recruiter about potential reasonable adjustments.

Many roles in QinetiQ are subject to national security vetting being completed, applicants who already hold the appropriate level of vetting may be able to transfer it upon appointment. A number of roles are also subject to additional restrictions, which mean factors such as nationality or previous nationalities may affect the roles that you can be employed in.

Please note that all applicants for this role must be eligible for SC clearance, as a minimum.