Aerospace-Defense Account Manager
Instrumental
Sales & Business Development
Palo Alto, CA, USA
Posted on Dec 18, 2024
Instrumental helps the world’s most admired electronics brands build better hardware. Our innovative manufacturing platform leverages advanced AI and data analysis to transform quality, inspection, and testing. By accelerating development, improving yields, and reducing field failures, we empower engineering, operations, and quality teams to meet their most ambitious goals.
About the Role:
As Aerospace-Defense Account Manager, you will spearhead Instrumental’s expansion within the Aerospace & Defense sector. In this high-impact role, you will partner with some of the most innovative and mission-critical organizations in the world to transform their manufacturing processes. You’ll become a trusted advisor, deeply embedded in their operations, and drive seven- & eight-figure expansions by demonstrating how Instrumental’s technology is essential to their success.
We’re looking for someone with an insider understanding of our customers – C-Suite and VPs of Engineering, Operations, and Manufacturing at the Primes and Tier 1/2s. While every company is slightly different, you come with real-world experience of the organizational politics across these different stakeholders, what motivates them, and how to expand when there may be competing needs and objectives. Perhaps, you’ve “sold internally” in change management or “sold externally” as a consultant or Account Manager in a prior role – if you have this kind of experience, we’d love to talk.
Key Responsibilities:
- Develop and drive account strategy for expansion, including leading value engineering, change management, customer engagement, enterprise navigation, and the expansion sales motion.
- Drive expansion opportunities by working closely with our strategic value customers to determine how our technology must embed in their processes in order to derive maximum value.
- Cultivate strategic relationships with C-suite & VP-level stakeholders, gaining insights into their goals and challenges in order to position our products and services as strategic assets for their manufacturing operations.
- Deliver Instrumental’s compelling value narrative by partnering with customers to calculate the realized value we deliver. You provide expert guidance on how to uplevel their processes to maximize efficiency gains and other improvements.
- Prepare and perform executive business reviews with customers to showcase the results and business impact from Instrumental’s products. Leverage these reviews to spotlight opportunities to increase value and ROI, as well as drive for expansions.
- Leverage data and analytics to track usage, engagement, and satisfaction levels to proactively resolve issues and pinpoint growth opportunities.
- Travel regularly on-site to customers to walk the halls, expand our relationships, and troubleshoot issues onsite.
Qualifications:
- 6+ years of industry domain experience - mechanical engineering, manufacturing operations, quality, and procurement – in consumer electronics or industrial/enterprise hardware.
- An engineering degree and/or direct experience working in a technical role, designing or shipping products. You have a deep understanding of how manufacturing KPIs (such as yield, throughput, engineering efficiency, etc.) map to an organization's P&L.
- You understand how large Aerospace and Defense enterprises operate from the inside.
- You have experience successfully managing large, cross-functional initiatives where you had to coordinate across multiple functional executive leaders and align organizational politics.
- Strong interpersonal skills – you are a natural team player who leads from the front and by example; you enjoy engaging and building relationships with new people
- Exemplary written and verbal communication skills; extensive executive presentation experience.
- A demonstrated ability to set the right goal, build an operational plan, and deliver.
- You either have experience at a startup or equivalent intrapreneurial experience where you had to build something from scratch.
We’re a growing team that works collaboratively, supports each other, and is energized by having impact. We value passion and the ability to learn – you’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t match the job description precisely!
The following is a representative annual base salary range for this position within the Bay Area: $156,000 - $174,000 with the opportunity for significant variable incentives. Job level and salary opportunities are evaluated through our interview process.
Instrumental offers a highly-rated variety of benefits, including health, vision, dental, commuter plans, and parental leave.
This position requires access to items and data that are developed under U.S. government contracts and subject to dissemination controls that limit access to U.S. citizens only.