Flare Bright is looking for a Commercial Business Development Manager

Commercial / Business Development

Full time position

Start date: As soon as possible

Permanent

Salary: Circa £40k

Introduction to the role

Flare Bright is a rapidly growing scale-up. We are dealing with an increasing number of customer enquiries and need a person with some experience in the defence and aerospace business development arena to run with these, generate further business, and also to prioritise, create, organise and monitor a structure around a CRM system. Finally, assistance is needed to write bid and grant proposals in conjunction with the Management Team.

Background to the Company

Flare Bright is an award-winning, UK-based Scale-Up which has grown from 3 to 16 employees over the past 2 years and benefited from funding and contracts from the UK MOD, DASA and UKRI’s Future Flight Industrial Challenge Fund.

It has used a novel machine learning digital twin ecosystem to develop a range of autonomous drones, some of which capture images, some accurately measure winds and others are capable of precision autonomous delivery.

We have excellent market traction as demonstrated by competitions won, letters of support and interest from leading Tier 1 aerospace and defence companies.

Flare Bright aims to develop and demonstrate the capability of machine learning Digital Twin optimisation on a wide range of aerial platforms, building towards an automated optimisation solution for other drones and novel aircraft, as well as drones developed by Flare Bright themselves.

Flare Bright creates a software solution that allows the digital twin to build itself. The technology is created and proven by using a unique sensor suite developed by Flare Bright that links directly with the machine learning digital twin environment.

In summary, Flare Bright is the 'Intel inside' for small and affordable navigation and control systems on autonomous flight systems (not limited to drones) to auto-generate machine learning digital twins and enable the safe, credible and optimal realisation of future aircraft concepts and aviation systems in rapidly changing and challenging flying environments.

Company Specifics

The current structure of the company are three senior Executives, all on the Board: CEO (engineer by background), CTO (software engineer by background) and CCO (sales and marketing by background), together with our Office Manager and Engineering Manager which make up the Management Team.

We have a highly qualified and enthusiastic workforce of 10 additionally to this, mainly on the software engineering side.

Flare Bright is currently delivering 2 UKRI Future Flight grant-funded programmes:

• Safezone, where we are equal partners in a £500k project with another SME
• SATE, a £3.7m project where we are part of a 12-organisation consortium

In addition:

• Flare Bright completed a UK MOD Defence and Security Accelerator grant (which was written up by the UK Govt as a Case Study)
• Commenced a follow-up 13-month £425k DASA grant on 1 June 2021.
• We are also imminently due to come on contract with a 6-month £220k R&D MOD contract.

We are expecting to receive R&D work from the Tier 1 aerospace and defence community and have applied for a 4-year, £1.5m Future Leader Fellowship grant to develop a new strand of the business. We have an extensive network across the aerospace, defence and security sectors in the UK and elsewhere (notably have been selected to participate in the US Army’s Expeditionary Warrior Experiment), and were part of the British Army’s Warfare Experiment 2020.

We have been shortlisted / won a number of Awards: CogX Best Innovation in Autonomous Vehicles; LA New Mobility Challenge; ADS Security Innovation Award; and Octopus Investments Entrepreneur Award.

Job Spec

Role: Commercial / Business Development

Primary responsibilities

Summary: support top management team in assessing opportunities, developing business, and informing strategic decision making.

• Develop business opportunities:
  • Research and identify new business opportunities by exploring trends, customers, partnerships, potential markets, and growth areas.
  • Build and maintain relationships with key strategic partners: tier 1s, end-users,SMEs.
• Product management: find gaps in user-needs through end-user research, informthe development of SnapShot (and other products).
• Proposals/funding/grant support – support/produce documentation as required to support applications.
• Marketing/branding/promotion – support associated activity such as writing press releases, posts, or blogs - lead projects where required.

Skills and Qualifications:

• Likely to be degree-level educated in a technical subject, and perhaps with a Masters or even a PhD
• Due to the defence nature of this work, being a UK or NATO citizen (or equivalent) will be necessary
• Basic knowledge and understanding of software and machine learning
• Understanding of defence market dynamics and how Government, Tier 1 and other SMEs operate in this market
• Understanding of how Future Flight will change the industry, particularly in respect of drones, UAM, eVTOL and the infrastructure around this
• Experience with scale-ups is a bonus
• Some understanding of writing bids and aspects of UK and European grant funding. Experience of contracts with large companies would be a bonus
• We also expect to engage in business with the US Defence Sector in the future, so knowledge of working with US DoD and the US Tier 1 aerospace and defence sector would be valuable
• Good basic computer skills with familiarity of Microsoft Office
• Good communication skills (written and spoken)
• Good organisation and attention to detail
• A driving licence will be useful

Location and Travel

The company is based at Westcott Venture Park, close to Oxford, Bicester and Aylesbury and a candidate is expected to use this as a main base. However, there will be extensive travel involved with this role to customer meetings and to conferences and Trade Shows, mainly in the UK, but also abroad. There is scope for some working from home.

Working at Flare Bright, you will be part of a young, friendly and dynamic team. We offer a

professional, respectful working environment and we believe in investing in our people and giving them as much growth as possible.

We are looking for someone who is motivated, passionate, and enthusiastic.

If this sounds like something you are interested in, please message us with a CV (2 pages maximum) and cover letter on careers@flarebright.com and we’ll arrange a conversation with further information._