Head of Sovereign Partnerships

The role

The Lead of Asian Business Development will establish and lead government and strategic business development activities across the Indo-Pacific. This person will own the complete regional business development and capture lifecycle, from market intelligence to contract conversion.

What you will do

• Develop and execute Matter's government and strategic business-development strategy for the Indo-Pacific.
• Create market-entry plans for priority countries based on mission demand and acquisition structures.
• Identify defense, intelligence, civil-government, and commercial missions for sensing and intelligence capabilities.
• Establish relationships with defense ministries, intelligence organizations, and other public-sector institutions.
• Lead customer discovery to identify operational problems for aircraft and space-based sensors.
• Navigate country-specific acquisition processes, budget cycles, and contracting mechanisms.
• Own the full lifecycle of qualified Indo-Pacific opportunities from identification to contract award.
• Develop capture plans including decision-makers, funding sources, and competitive environments.
• Identify and develop relationships with regional aerospace and defense primes and partners.
• Translate customer missions and operational requirements into inputs for engineering and product teams.

Required qualifications

• 8–12 or more years of experience in international business development, government sales, capture management, strategic partnerships, or a closely related field.
• At least five years of relevant experience working with defense, intelligence, space, civil-government, or national-security customers in the Indo-Pacific.
• Demonstrated experience developing and closing complex government, defense, aerospace, technology, data, or enterprise opportunities.
• Track record of managing long-cycle, multi-stakeholder sales and capture processes.
• Strong understanding of government acquisition, procurement, budgeting, contracting, and tender processes in one or more priority Indo-Pacific countries.
• Established network among relevant government, defense, intelligence, aerospace, space, geospatial, or technology stakeholders in the region.
• Experience building country strategies, account plans, capture plans, partner strategies, and qualified pipelines.
• Ability to engage credibly with senior government officials, military officers, intelligence professionals, acquisition personnel, engineers, and industry executives.
• Ability to understand technically complex products and translate them into mission, operational, and economic value.
• Experience coordinating proposals, demonstrations, negotiations, and contracts across multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong commercial judgment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.

Nice to have

• Experience in Earth observation, remote sensing, spectral imaging, geospatial intelligence, satellite systems, defense technology, aerospace, artificial intelligence, or data and analytics.
• Experience selling to or partnering with defense and intelligence organizations in Japan, South Korea, Australia, or Singapore.
• Demonstrated success closing multi-million-dollar or multi-year government contracts.
• Experience with both direct government sales and partner-led market-entry models.
• Experience working in an early-stage or high-growth technology company.
• Knowledge of U.S. export-control requirements and international technology-transfer considerations.
• Familiarity with sovereign capability requirements, data-residency considerations, industrial-participation programs, offsets, or local-content requirements.
• Experience structuring demonstrations or pilot programs that subsequently converted into operational procurements.
• Professional fluency in Japanese or Korean.
• Additional language capability relevant to Southeast Asia.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation based on experience
• Early-stage equity package
• 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision coverage
• Opportunity to work on novel sensing, data, and AI systems

About the company

Matter Intelligence is developing advanced sensing and intelligence capabilities that help governments, operators, and autonomous systems better understand the physical world. The company is building its government business around national-security, defense, intelligence, civil-government, and commercial missions.