Business Development Manager

ABOUT IONETIC

IONETIC is a software-accelerated, end-to-end battery pack design and manufacturing company. Our mission is to make electrification possible and compelling for every manufacturer on the planet.

We were founded on a problem our team saw first-hand consulting for automotive OEMs: everyone wanted a battery pack that was custom for them, but few could afford the time, cost or risk. Arc, our integrated stack of parametric design software, flexible hardware architecture and novel manufacturing systems, answers that. It generates a production-ready pack configuration automatically, in minutes rather than months, and takes hardware into series production three times faster than traditional approaches.

We design and build packs for automotive, bus, marine and commercial and off-highway customers, from our R&D and Battery Pack Development Lab in London and our Battery Fabrication and Industrialisation Centre in Brackley.

THE ROLE

This is the first dedicated commercial role , and it sits directly alongside the CEO.

You will own the front end of our commercial effort: finding and qualifying new opportunities, running them to a decision, and building the operating rhythm that makes our pipeline predictable rather than anecdotal. Because we are a start-up, the role deliberately spans more than pure sales. You will move between business development, commercial operations, marketing and strategic projects in the same week, and you will be expected to pick up whatever the commercial function needs rather than wait for it to be assigned.

You will work with the CEO on the opportunities that shape the company, and independently on the ones that build the funnel underneath them. It suits someone who wants scope and ownership early, is comfortable being the person who makes the first move, and is energised rather than unsettled by a fast-moving environment where priorities shift.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

New business and pipeline

- Identify, research and, qualify new customers across our target markets, and build the outbound approach that reaches them.

- Own top-of-funnel activity end to end: target list, outreach, first conversation, qualification, handover into a technical discussion.

- Run opportunities through to commercial close alongside the CEO and our engineering leads, including proposals, quotations and commercial terms.

- Represent IONETIC at industry events, trade shows and customer sites, and turn that activity into tracked pipeline rather than business cards.

- Build and maintain relationships across the customer account, not just with the person who replied first.

Commercial operations

- Own the CRM as a genuine source of truth: pipeline hygiene, stage discipline, next actions on every live opportunity.

- Build the reporting the leadership team and board need on pipeline, conversion and forecast, and make it repeatable.

- Improve how we sell: qualification criteria, proposal templates, pricing inputs, follow-up cadence, handover into delivery.

- Track competitor activity and market movement, and feed it into positioning and pricing decisions.

Marketing and positioning

- Work with the CEO on how we position Arc and our hardware to each market, and keep the message consistent across sales collateral, the website and campaigns.

- Produce the material that carries the commercial argument: pitch decks, one-pagers, case studies, customer-facing content.

- Run demand generation campaigns and measure what they actually return.

Strategy and special projects

- Support the CEO on strategic initiatives, including partnerships, new market entry and investor-facing commercial material.

- Bring structure to open commercial questions and turn them into a recommendation the leadership team can decide on.

- Take on cross-functional projects across the business as priorities demand.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

- Track record in business development, sales or commercial management in a technical, engineering or manufacturing environment, with evidence of opportunities you personally sourced and closed.

- Genuinely comfortable prospecting from a standing start. Much of this pipeline does not exist yet and you will be the person creating it.

- Able to hold a credible technical conversation with engineers on the customer side, and to translate between a customer requirement and what our team needs to hear.

- Commercially sharp: proposals, pricing logic, negotiation, and the judgement to know which opportunities are worth the company's time.

- Organised and self-directed, with the discipline to run a clean pipeline and reporting rhythm without being chased.

- Strong written and verbal communication. You will be writing material that goes to customers, the board and investors.

- Happy operating with ambiguity, changing priorities and a broad remit, and comfortable working directly with a founder.

- Willing to travel to customer sites and industry events, and to work across both our London and Brackley locations.

Advantageous

- Experience selling into automotive, bus, marine, off-highway, defence or another vehicle OEM or Tier 1 environment.

- Exposure to electrification, battery systems or high-voltage products.

- Experience in an early-stage or scaling company where the commercial function was being built rather than inherited.

- Experience with marketing campaigns and demand generation alongside direct selling.