Head of Business Development in London

About Seabound: Seabound is an award-winning startup decarbonizing global shipping by capturing CO₂ emissions directly onboard ships. To date, we have completed two world-first pilots; raised over $10M in equity and grant funding from top investors including Lowercarbon Capital, Collaborative Fund, Y Combinator, and Eastern Pacific Shipping; and partnered with leading shipping and industrial players. Having recently completed our first full-scale commercial systems, Seabound is now entering its commercialization and scale-up phase.

The Role: We are seeking a Head of Business Development to lead and grow Seabound's commercial function. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will own customer and key partner relationships; drive near-term commercial execution; and help build the foundations of Seabound's long-term sales, business development, and partnerships capabilities. This role will start highly hands-on and execution-focused, with scope to define longer-term strategy and take on broader commercial leadership responsibilities as the company scales.

What You'll Do:

• Short-term (0–9 months): execution & deal ownership
• Own Seabound's commercial relationships across priority customers, ports, and strategic stakeholders.
• Secure short-term commercial deals for demonstrations and early deployments.
• Build the foundation for longer-term commercial agreements for broader fleet deployments, including long-term service agreements, with the aim of securing one or more of these in the short term.
• Where knowledge gaps exist, develop and maintain a deep understanding of the global shipping landscape, including key players, decision-makers, ownership structures, and strategic priorities, to inform customer targeting and engagement.
• Identify which customer segments, profiles, and use cases represent the strongest near-term and long-term fit for Seabound.
• Own pricing strategy and early unit economics across products and services, balancing commercial viability with deployment realities.
• Build and grow the customer pipeline and progress opportunities through it, with accountability for converting traction into contracted revenue.
• Work closely with customers to revise and refine Seabound's product, business model, and commercial structures based on real-world needs and feedback.
• Develop a deep understanding of Seabound's customer business cases, including regulatory drivers, cost structures, and economic trade-offs, and communicate these clearly and credibly to customers.
• Help prioritise customers, deployments, and commercial opportunities in line with company capacity and strategy.
• Track the competitive landscape and ensure Seabound's offering remains differentiated as the market evolves.
• Identify and pursue opportunities to strengthen Seabound's brand, credibility, and perception within the shipping industry.
• Represent Seabound externally in customer meetings, industry events, conferences, and partner discussions.
• Identify opportunities to reduce commercial or delivery costs through deal structure, partnerships, or customer insight.
• Mid-term (9–18 months): scale & structure
• Continue progressing and converting commercial pipeline into contracted deployments.
• Secure longer-term commercial agreements, including multi-year service agreements and fleet expansion opportunities.
• Develop repeatable sales processes, frameworks, commercial reporting, and playbooks based on early learnings.
• Build out the commercial team and supporting processes as required to support growth.
• Work with external stakeholders — including partners, advisors, ports, and other ecosystem players — to originate and progress opportunities.
• Support commercial inputs into fundraising, grants, and project-finance discussions.
• Support regulatory engagement and advocacy efforts where required to unlock or accelerate commercial adoption.
• Ensure early commercial contracts are executed successfully, working closely with Seabound's engineering and operations teams and feeding delivery learnings back into product and commercial strategy.
• Ensure commercial contracts are robust, scalable, and aligned with Seabound's risk and delivery framework.
• Longer-term (18+ months): leadership & scope expansion
• Expand and lead Seabound's commercial team across sales, business development, and partnerships.
• Drive realised revenue growth from early commercial traction to tens, and ultimately hundreds, of millions in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
• Contribute to shaping Seabound's commercial strategy as regulation, markets, and customer needs evolve.
• Serve as a core member of the leadership team as Seabound continues to scale.

Who You Are:

• 10+ years of experience in commercial, business development, or sales roles.
• Comfortable operating in complex, B2B, long-sales-cycle environments (industrial, energy, infrastructure, maritime, climate tech, or similar).
• Demonstrated history of originating, negotiating, and closing material commercial agreements.
• Confident engaging with senior stakeholders, including shipowners, C-suite executives, technical teams, and regulators.
• Sufficient technical acumen to engage credibly with Seabound's engineering team and technical stakeholders at shipping companies.
• Comfortable working with financial models and regulatory frameworks, and willing to get into the weeds to understand and communicate the customer business case.
• Clear and persuasive communicator, able to explain complex ideas in writing, verbally, and through well-structured customer-facing materials and presentations.
• Strong sense of accountability and end-to-end responsibility.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and building things from scratch.
• Proactive, creative, and resourceful, with a willingness to think outside the box.
• Curious about climate, regulation, and how markets evolve, particularly where such changes affect commercial outcomes.
• Bias to action, experimentation, and learning by doing.
• Strong listener and quick learner, with the ability to synthesise new information and translate it into commercial action.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in shipping, energy, heavy industry, or infrastructure.
• Experience selling or commercializing a novel product, technology, or business model.
• Exposure to partnerships, joint ventures, or project-based commercial deals.
• Experience scaling a commercial function at a startup or high-growth company.
• Familiarity with regulatory-driven markets.
• Existing network across the shipping industry.

Why Join Seabound:

• Help materially reduce emissions from the global shipping industry — one of the world's hardest-to-abate sectors.
• Build a brand new category of technology for the shipping industry and commercialize a world-first climate technology.
• Join a tiny commercial team, with significant scope to shape how Seabound's entire commercial function is built and operates.
• Take on outsized scope and responsibility as one of Seabound's earliest and most critical commercial hires.
• Work closely with a strong, highly technical team, translating advanced engineering into real-world deployments and revenue.
• Play a central role in taking Seabound from first commercial deployments to scaled adoption across the global shipping industry.
• Competitive salary and meaningful equity.