Business Development Lead- Defence and SATCOM

About Photon-IV

Photon-IV is a Canadian defence-tech company building the predictive layer where satellite and terrestrial networks meet.

• Location: Waterloo / Cambridge, Ontario. Hybrid.
• Eligibility: Canadian citizen strongly preferred. Our work touches controlled goods and Government of Canada programs, so you must be eligible for security screening and Controlled Goods enrollment.
• Stage: Small team, real contracts, senior technical leads with prime and space experience working alongside early-career engineers. You will own things end to end.

The job: Turn a working product and live government traction into a pipeline of programs, operators and primes.

What we need is someone who can carry our product lines into rooms we are not in yet: allied defence programs, satcom operators, and the prime contractors who integrate at the network layer.

What you will do

• Own the funnel from first contact to signed agreement across defence programs, satellite operators and prime contractors.
• Run capture on Government of Canada and allied opportunities: IDEaS phases, CSA programs, NATO channels, and the grants that fund the next stage of the work.
• Build and keep warm the relationships that matter, so nobody important goes cold. Translate a deep technical product into what a program officer or a telco exec actually needs to hear.
• Draft the partnership and proposal material, and work directly with the CEO on positioning and pricing.

What you bring

• A track record of actually winning government or defence programs, not just sourcing them. You have carried a capture from qualification to award.
• Fluency in the Canadian defence and space ecosystem: DND, DRDC, CSA, ISED, the primes, the funding instruments.
• The ability to hold a credible technical conversation about networks, satellite, or O-RAN without needing an engineer in the room for every call.
• Clear, direct writing. You can turn a technical claim into a one-pager a decision-maker reads to the end.

Nice to have

• Existing relationships with satellite operators, telcos, or NTN programs.
• Experience selling or partnering around O-RAN, RAN software, or space connectivity.