Director, U.S. Defense Sales

The role

You will lead activities to identify, shape, capture, and win opportunities in the U.S. defense market. This player-coach role involves managing a small team and directly executing on new deals for hardware, data, and software sales.

What you will do

• Drive U.S. Defense revenue growth and achieve sales targets
• Build and manage a robust sales pipeline
• Coach and enable a small defense sales team
• Provide leadership with assessments of pipeline health and risks
• Represent Sofar at customer meetings, industry events, and demonstrations
• Build and manage relationships with prime contractors and partners
• Collaborate across sales, product, engineering, legal, finance, marketing, and operations
• Translate customer demand and company capabilities into growth plans
• Develop relationships with program offices, contracting organizations, and partners
• Create pathways from customer interest to funded federal programs

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in U.S. defense technology sales
• Demonstrated experience advancing and winning complex U.S. federal opportunities involving multiple stakeholders
• Demonstrated experience leading a sales team
• Ability to connect operational users, program managers, contracting officials, funders, policymakers, and industry partners around a path to award
• Working knowledge of the federal budget, authorization, and appropriations processes
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Willingness to work directly on partner strategies, presentations, and follow-up actions
• Willingness to travel up to 25%
• U.S. citizenship
• Previously or currently have a Secret or higher level U.S. government security clearance

Nice to have

• Active SECRET or TS/SCI security clearance
• Direct experience supporting maritime, ocean, weather, environmental, autonomy, sensing, data, or decision-support programs
• Experience working at a fast-paced defense tech company
• Experience with the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, SOCOM, U.S. Intelligence Community, or other U.S. agencies with maritime and/or national-security missions
• Experience selling or preparing proposals for hardware-enabled solutions, data-as-a-service offerings, software, or integrated technical capabilities to the federal government

Before you apply

• U.S. citizenship required
• Must have previously or currently have a Secret or higher level U.S. government security clearance

About the company

Sofar designs, builds, and deploys a privately owned network of marine sensors to deliver marine weather forecasts, maritime domain awareness, and decision support. The company aims to create ocean intelligence for a sustainable and secure future.