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Loft Orbital is seeking a Director of Business Development for the Americas to lead market development, new business creation, and strategic partnerships across the commercial space ecosystem. This is a full-cycle business development role focused on originating net-new opportunities rather than managing an established book of business.
Key Responsibilities:
- Identify high-potential companies, emerging constellations, and new mission opportunities across the Americas; build relationships early and develop deep understanding of customer strategy, funding, technical roadmaps, and mission plans.
- Proactively originate opportunities by identifying where Loft's infrastructure can solve customer problems before formal requirements or RFPs exist.
- Build relationships with founders, CEOs, CTOs, engineering leaders, mission owners, and senior decision-makers; shape solutions aligned with their business and technical strategy.
- Lead opportunities from initial concept through pathfinder missions, demonstrations, first missions, and constellation-scale programs.
- Own full-cycle business development: qualification, solution development, proposal, commercial negotiation, contracting, and close, partnering with internal teams.
- Develop relationships with spacecraft manufacturers, launch providers, data and analytics companies, systems integrators, and ecosystem partners to create new customer opportunities.
- Turn successful initial missions into long-term customer relationships; identify expansion opportunities for additional spacecraft, missions, payloads, services, or constellation deployments.
- Maintain strong understanding of the commercial space ecosystem, including emerging companies, funding activity, mission architectures, competitive dynamics, and evolving customer needs.
- Bring together technical, commercial, and operational stakeholders to turn ambiguous customer needs into executable programs.
About Loft Orbital:
Founded in 2017, Loft provides governments, companies, and research institutions with a fast, reliable, and simple way to deploy missions in orbit. The company integrates, launches, and operates spacecraft, offering end-to-end missions as a service across Earth observation, IoT connectivity, on-orbit AI, national security missions, and more. With more than 30 missions flown and a growing fleet on track to reach 30 satellites by 2027, Loft is scaling rapidly across offices in San Francisco, CA; Golden, CO; and Toulouse, France.
Requirements:
- 8+ years of experience in business development, strategic sales, partnerships, or equivalent customer-facing role with strong track record of originating and closing complex opportunities.
- Deep understanding of the space industry and commercial space ecosystem, including satellite operators, spacecraft manufacturers, launch providers, space data companies, and related technology and infrastructure providers.
- Demonstrated success as a net-new business developer and hunter—someone who has created opportunities and opened new customers rather than primarily managing an established book of business.
- Experience selling complex technical products, services, or infrastructure through a consultative or solutions-oriented approach.
- Ability to build credibility with senior executive and technical stakeholders, from founders and CEOs to CTOs, engineering leaders, and program owners.
- Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, early-stage opportunities where customer need, solution, or buying process may not yet be fully defined.
- Experience owning complex opportunities through the full business development and sales cycle, including solution development, proposals, commercial negotiations, and contracting.
- Strong commercial judgment and ability to prioritize opportunities based on strategic value, probability of success, and long-term potential.
- Excellent communication, relationship-building, and negotiation skills.
- Willingness to travel regularly to meet customers and partners across the Americas.
Nice to Haves:
- Existing relationships with commercial constellation companies, emerging space companies, or strategic players in the Americas space ecosystem.
- Experience selling satellite, spacecraft, mission, launch, data, connectivity, or other space infrastructure services.
- Experience developing strategic partnerships or channel relationships that generate measurable commercial opportunities.
- Technical background in aerospace, space systems, engineering, or related field.
- Experience working with venture-backed or rapidly scaling companies.
- Experience across multiple segments of the space ecosystem rather than a single product or customer category.
- Experience with mission-as-a-service, satellite-as-a-service, hosted payloads, or other infrastructure-based space business models.
