SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Shield AI, a venture-backed defense-tech company, is seeking a Senior Director of Deal Strategy Execution to build and lead a new Deal Strategy Execution (DSE) function. This role owns the end-to-end architecture of complex, mixed hardware-software transactions—from intake and qualification through deal structuring, packaging, governance, and post-deal learning.
Key responsibilities include:
**Organization & Governance**: Charter the DSE team, define engagement criteria, service levels, decision rights, and escalation frameworks. Establish when DSE engages (priority opportunities, complex configurations, international scope, partner-led constructs, packaged offerings, or exception requests).
**Cross-Functional Deal Reviews**: Chair structured deal reviews with BD Ops, Sales, Product, Finance, Legal, Contracts, Delivery, and Partnerships. Provide executives with clear decisions, trade-offs, and recommendations rather than disconnected approval gates.
**Strategic Deal Architecture**: Own deal strategy quality on priority pursuits—customer value hypothesis, solution configuration, commercial construct, pricing posture, terms, partner path, negotiation approach, and close plan. Challenge weak qualification and help teams exit or reframe low-probability deals.
**Modular Capability Catalog**: Direct the build and maintenance of an authoritative capability catalog with approved configurations, modular bundles, eligibility criteria, deployment assumptions, pricing guardrails, discount logic, and delivery handoffs across hardware, software, subscriptions, services, training, sustainment, and integration.
**Deal Plays & Repeatability**: Establish a deal-play roadmap aligned to GTM priorities, product maturity, and international growth. Convert wins, losses, and delivery outcomes into qualification tools, discovery guides, value narratives, proposal modules, negotiation guidance, and reusable content.
**Exception Governance**: Govern pricing, terms, and delivery exceptions through clear thresholds and fast escalation. Serve as the escalation point for deal strategy conflict, cross-functional ambiguity, and strategic exceptions.
**Measurement & Continuous Improvement**: Measure business impact—cycle time, deal velocity, win rate on strategic pursuits, gross-margin protection, exception volume, reuse rate, and delivery outcomes. Lead postmortems on won and lost strategic business.
**Team Leadership**: Build and lead Regional Deal Strategists, the Business Proposals team, and the Architecture and Packaging function. Maintain clear role boundaries: Regional Deal Strategists own the deal; Proposal Managers own the submission.
**Enablement & Incentives**: Partner with GTM Enablement on training and work with Rev Ops and Business Ops on buying-program and deal-structure SPIFFs.
The role operates as an advisory, strategic function—not administrative. It shapes stronger deals through clear guardrails, speed by design, centralized knowledge, cross-functional accountability, and disciplined measurement. The organization is evaluated on velocity, economics, execution quality, and reuse.
**Requirements**:
- 10+ years in revenue, commercial, deal, or sales leadership roles in B2B technology, with material experience structuring complex, mixed software and hardware transactions
- Demonstrated experience building or leading a deal desk, deal strategy, or commercial structuring function and elevating it from an approval queue into a strategic capability
- Deep familiarity with international government contracting, international sales, and partner-led motions; comfort with export considerations, contracting pathways, long cycles, complex stakeholders, and program-driven buyers is required
- Defense, dual-use, or public-sector commercial exposure strongly preferred
- Experience hiring and developing high-performing teams of strategists and proposal professionals
- Deal architect mindset: thinks in commercial constructs, pricing logic, and negotiation posture; translates technical capability into viable, approvable transactions
- Cross-functional orchestrator: aligns sales, finance, legal, product, and delivery around decisions without claiming their authority
- Negotiation craft: has personally shaped and negotiated high-value, non-standard transactions to close
- Strong writing ability: produces executive-ready deal briefs, decision memos, and value narratives that compress complexity without losing it
- Standardizer by instinct: converts one-off wins into reusable plays, templates, and guardrails
- Calibrated judgment on the line between governing exceptions and adding bureaucracy
