Vice President of Business Development

SOE grows by solving the right problems for the right customers. This role is for the leader who builds that engine: someone who can identify where SOE's capabilities create genuine long-term value, develop the team and the strategy to pursue those opportunities, and close deals that both sides are proud of.

Role Overview:
The Vice President of Business Development (“VP of BD”) is responsible for shaping and executing SOE’s revenue sustainment and growth strategy. This role reports directly to the CEO and owns the full business development lifecycle, from market strategy and opportunity qualification through deal execution. This requires the VP of BD to lead, hire, and train a business development team to meet company goals and objectives. This role partners closely with all teams and areas of SOE especially engineering leadership to ensure commercial decisions align with SOE values, reinforce technical excellence and generate impactful outcomes.

What You Will Do:

• Define and execute a business development strategy across large, complex, multi-year engagements and smaller opportunities that align with SOE’s goals
• Build and improve deal qualification frameworks so that SOE can prioritize the right opportunities.
• Partner with engineering and finance to shape offerings, pricing models, and technical narratives while developing repeatable capture and account expansion motions for long-cycle, high-credibility sales
• Personally lead, negotiate, and close SOE’s highest-complexity opportunities, owning all aspects of the engagement from deal economics and margin discipline to logistics
• Build, train, and mentor a high-performing business development team capable of owning complex opportunities from discovery and qualification through deal shaping and technical value articulation
• Drive individual and team accountability through  key performance indicators (“KPIs”), including revenue growth, time-to-close, and gross margin
• Create clear feedback loops across sales, leadership, and engineering execution to improve execution and outcomes 
• Develop strategic partnerships that expand deal size, scope, and long-term value
• Adapt technical solutions when  conditions shift the factors of success for SOE and our customer to drive alignment between SOE’s engineering teams and our customer
• Build frameworks and processes that translate intuition and successful deal strategies into repeatable, teachable approaches for the team
• Prioritize solving the right problem for each customer over maximizing short-term revenue: validate fit and be willing to reshape or walk away from deals that don’t serve the customer’s long-term goals

What You Will Need: 

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical or business-related field (Engineering, Business, Finance, Mathematics, etc.)
• 10+ years of business development and sales experiences in at least one highly regulated industry, such as aerospace, defense, medical, or energy
• Proven track record closing $1M–$10M+ complex engineering, R&D, or technical services deals s 
• Ability to think abstractly, adapt and reframe solutions mid-pursuit, and maintain customer alignment when driving factors shift 
• Experience leading high-performing sales and capture teams with a high sense of ownership and accountability 
• Deep expertise in consultative and strategic selling methodologies and their applicability
• Strong financial literacy and ability to evaluate technical tradeoffs and align commercial terms with engineering realities
• Fluency in pipeline management, forecasting, and CRM-based performance tracking 
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with experience presenting to senior executives and customers
• Ability to build scalable frameworks and processes that enable the team to replicate success independently 

What Would Be Useful:

• Technical foundation in engineering through education and/or prior individual contributor experience 
• Strong financial modeling skills for services economics, pricing, and margin analysis
• Experience leading business development efforts in commercial, civil, and/or new space markets

Benefits: 

• Compensation range of $229,500-$280,500 + equity incentive plan
• Flexible work hours and work from home policy 
• 100% employer-paid health insurance (Medical, Dental, Vision) for employees + 50% dependent coverage
• Unlimited paid time off policy, 11x paid company holidays, 12x paid sick days
• 401(k) retirement account and employer matching (Safe Harbor 4%)
• Generous paid parental leave
• Relocation assistance available if 50+ miles away from the office
• Electric Vehicle (EV) charging ports
• Catered lunches, snacks, and accessible kitchen

Our Values in Practice:
SOE’s four core values are the standard by which we operate. The VP of BD is expected to model each of them in every customer interaction, internal decision, and team dynamic:

• Lead with Curiosity: Listen before pitching. Go beyond the stated ask to find the real problem, invest in understanding the underlying engineering and technology behind what you’re selling, and bring what you learn back to the team.
• Own the Outcome: Take full responsibility for the pipeline, execution, and team performance. Communicate early, fix problems fast, and hold the standard.
• Build the Right Thing: Revenue follows from solving the right problem. Validate that SOE’s solution genuinely unblocks the customer, even when a faster deal is available.
• Empower Others: Develop the team, not just the pipeline. Create tools and frameworks others can follow and build partnerships grounded in mutual respect.

About SOE:
SOE is an engineering consulting firm that specializes in electrical, electromechanical, and embedded systems. Founded in 2016, we’ve grown from a 3-person operation to a team of 40+ engineers across offices in El Segundo, CA and Redmond, WA. In that time, we’ve completed over 250 projects for more than 100 clients. Our designs control rocket engines, manage satellite communications, instrument fusion reactors, and are enjoyed by consumers around the world. The only thing we won’t build are weapons.

We’re 100% employee-owned, which means that every engineer at SOE has a real stake in what we build. We structured the company this way because we believe the people best equipped to advance our mission are the ones doing the work.

We approach problems from first principles. We break challenges down to their most fundamental components, which is how we find solutions that hold up across industries, use cases, and engineering functions. We focus on solving the right problems and building the teams to take them on.

Additional Requirements:

• Applicant must be able to work 40 hours a week in El Segundo, California, USA
• Applicant must be eligible to work on ITAR projects
• Job Type: Full-time (Salary)

Export Control Requirements:

• To conform with U.S. Government export control regulations, including the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide sponsorship at this time.

If you don’t meet 100% of the preferred skills and experience, we encourage you to still apply!
Second Order Effects is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with SOE is governed on the basis of excellence and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status.