Account Manager - Defence in Hampshire

Job Title: Account Manager - Defence

Salary: £60,000.00 - £79,000.00 (depending on experience) + bonus

Company: UK Connect Ltd (UKCD)

Department: Defence Operations

Employment: Full Time, Permanent

Security: Capable of obtaining and maintaining appropriate UK Security Clearance

Location: UK Connect HQ Farnborough (with regular UK travel and occasional travel)

Reports To: Business Unit Lead

Targeted Start Date: November 2026

Role Summary

UK Connect Defence (UKCD) is looking for a Defence Account Manager to build strong relationships with Defence users, understand the problems they are trying to solve and help turn those requirements into real commercial opportunities. This is a commercial, customer-facing role focused on the user.

Your focus will be developing relationships with Defence users and growing those accounts; our Business Development team will lead the wider commercial capture, procurement and contracting process. You will spend much of your time with military users: visiting units, attending meetings and exercises, demonstrating equipment, supporting trials and understanding how technology is actually being used in the field.

You will work closely with our Business Development Manager, engineers and product teams to help shape the right solution and develop successful user engagement into trials, projects and wider deployment.

The technology you will be working around includes:

• Rapidly deployable broadband and tactical connectivity
• 5G and LEO satellite communications
• Unattended ground sensors
• Low-power sensor networks
• TAK / Cursor-on-Target integration
• Systems integration between different Defence technologies
• UK-developed and manufactured Defence technology
  

This role is particularly suited to a credible recent service leaver, or somebody currently serving and preparing to transition into industry, who has experience using technology at the tactical edge.

About UK Connect Defence

UKCD helps Defence turn operational requirements into deployable, capability at pace. Our approach is simple:

Discover → Integrate → Prove → Scale

We start with the user's problem, bring together the right technologies, prove the solution through practical trials and then create a route to wider deployment. Our work spans resilient connectivity, tactical communications, sensing, edge technology and systems integration.

Through our UK product-development and manufacturing capability, we also design and manufacture technology around genuine operational requirements.

UK Connect Ltd has more than a decade of experience, a national field-engineering capability, more than 3,000 deployments each year and a UK-based 24/7 Network Operations Centre.

About You

You are likely to be a recent service leaver or currently serving member of the UK Armed Forces preparing to move into industry.

You understand how equipment and technology are actually used in an operational environment.

Your background might include:

• Specialist or high-readiness units
• Signals / CIS
• Tactical communications
• Reconnaissance or surveillance
• ISR
• Force Protection
• Counter-UAS
• Capability development
• Experimentation and trials
• Other roles involving technology at the tactical edge

You should be comfortable talking to operators, but equally able to sit with senior military stakeholders, engineers, commercial teams and industry partners. You may already have a good Defence network. More importantly, you know how to build trust, maintain relationships and become somebody users want to engage with.

You do not need previous Defence-industry sales experience, although commercial or account-management experience would be useful.

What You Will Do

• Develop Defence Accounts: Build long-term relationships with users, units, capability teams and key stakeholders.
• Spend Time with Users: Understand how they operate, what equipment they currently use, what works, what does not and where gaps exist.
• Demonstrate Technology: Take UKCD products and partner technologies into users, explain what they can do and support practical demonstrations.
• Support Trials: Help organise and deliver evaluations, exercises and field trials, gathering feedback and identifying what needs to happen next.
• Identify Opportunities: Recognise when a user problem could become a genuine project, product requirement or commercial opportunity.
• Shape Solutions: Work with engineers and product teams to translate operational problems into realistic technical solutions.
• Grow Accounts: Identify where a successful trial, product or relationship could expand into other units, commands or capability areas.
• Support Commercial Activity: Work alongside the Business Development Managers, providing the user relationships, operational context and customer insight needed to progress opportunities through proposals, procurement and contract.
• Feedback Into Product Development: Bring user feedback into UKCD so that future products are designed around genuine operational needs.
• Represent UKCD: Attend customer meetings, trade shows, conferences, exercises, demonstrations and relevant industry events.

Experience

We are looking for someone who can demonstrate:

• Recent and credible UK Armed Forces experience, or continued involvement in a relevant Defence environment since leaving.
• Strong understanding of operations at the tactical edge.
• Credibility with military users.
• Experience using, deploying or evaluating technology in operational environments.
• An interest in communications, sensing and tactical technology.
• The ability to understand technical concepts without needing to be an engineer.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills.
• Commercial awareness and the ability to recognise an opportunity.
• Confidence dealing with stakeholders from operator level through to senior military and industry decision-makers.
• The ability to work independently and follow through on commitments.
• Willingness to travel regularly across the UK and occasionally overseas.

Experience in any of the following would be particularly useful:

CIS | tactical communications | SATCOM/LEO | 4G/5G | TAK | C4ISR | ISR | Counter-UAS | unattended sensing | LoRaWAN | tactical networks | systems integration | Defence experimentation

Company Culture and Values

We have been a certified Great Place to Work for six years running and care about the communities we impact. We give a percentage of our profits each year to our charity, the Farr Foundation, which supports children in getting into STEM subjects. Last year, we supported over 15,000 children.

What's In It for You?

This is an opportunity to help shape a growing UK Defence technology business.

You will work directly with Defence users and have genuine influence over the products and solutions we develop. You will be able to take a conversation with a user, help understand the problem, put technology in their hands, support the trial and see successful ideas develop into real capability.

You will also have the support of the wider company, including engineering, field delivery, technical specialists and a UK-based 24/7 Network Operations Centre.

Benefits:

• 25 days annual leave as standard, with options to increase up to 35 days annual leave.
• • Unique benefits points scheme giving access to lucrative offerings (cash vouchers, Merlin passes, National Trust passes, and more).
  • Company-wide bonus scheme.

• Enhanced Pension.

• Enhanced Maternity/Paternity Leave.

• Death in Service (4x salary).

• Work within a company whose Executive Chairman has been recognised as ‘One to Watch’ in The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders Programme.

• Modern and progressive office space.

• Free Parking.

• Café, Gym and Restaurant on-site.

• Opportunity to work within a growing UK Defence technology business

• Significant opportunity to influence new products and capability

How to Apply:

STEP 1: Click the 'Apply for this job' button at the top of this page, which connects to our ATS at ukconnect.com/careers.