Vice President, Business Development

About Burns:

Burns Engineering provides professional engineering design and project management services for transportation, facilities, and infrastructure projects. We help our clients attain their strategic goals and initiatives through successful large-scale infrastructure projects. Burns’ full-service capabilities include mechanical, electrical, civil, structural, transportation, and energy consulting engineering.

Recently voted a Top Workplace by Philly.com, we credit our strength as an organization to our talented, driven, vibrant team. Burns is an ENR Top 500 Firm, and has been named an MEP Giant by Consulting-Specifying Engineer Magazine, as well as a Hot Firm by Zweig. We are industry experts, proven leaders, innovative thinkers, and team players. We put our clients’ successes and best interests first, because their success is our success. We have fun at work because we love making a difference in the world. We are looking for high-energy, bright, collaborative individuals who want the opportunity to “write their own story” with us.

Position Summary

We are seeking an accomplished Vice President of Business Development in Southern California or Philadelphia , to strengthen and lead the processes, disciplines, and operating rhythms that drive enterprise growth.

This executive will be responsible for achieving enterprise sales objectives by overseeing the development, maintenance, and conversion of a high-quality pipeline of opportunities and improving the organization's effectiveness in capture management and strategic account management.

The Vice President will provide oversight in a matrix organization to capture managers and strategic account leads, establishing consistent processes, expectations, tools, training, performance measures, and accountability. Working closely with senior executives, P&L owners, and business-unit leaders, this role will ensure that account strategies and major pursuits are effectively managed and that commitments translate into action and measurable results.

A significant focus will be strengthening the organization's approach to capture management for complex, competitive RFPs , particularly within the transportation, healthcare, higher education, and data center markets. Experience with public-sector customers and procurement processes is highly desirable.

The ideal candidate is an experienced go-to-market leader and operator who brings deep knowledge of capture management and account management, along with a demonstrated track record of contributing to successful pursuits and business growth. This individual excels at bringing structure to complex organizations, developing repeatable processes, coaching teams, and coordinating execution across multiple business units.

Key Responsibilities

Go-to-Market Strategy, Processes & Operating Discipline

- Develop and institutionalize scalable go-to-market processes supporting business development, capture management, and strategic account management.

- Establish consistent enterprise methodologies, governance, stage gates, tools, templates, and operating rhythms.

- Define clear expectations, roles, milestones, and performance measures for capture managers, strategic account leads, business-unit leaders, and other pursuit participants.

- Establish effective pipeline, account, and capture reviews focused on decisions, actions, risks, and accountability rather than simply reporting activity.

- Develop practical playbooks and training to strengthen capture-management and account-management capabilities throughout the organization.

- Create mechanisms for sharing lessons learned and best practices across business units.

- Use win/loss results, pipeline performance, and feedback from business leaders to continuously improve GTM processes and organizational effectiveness.

Pipeline Management & Enterprise Sales Execution

- Oversee the development, maintenance, and conversion of a disciplined pipeline of qualified opportunities aligned with enterprise and business-unit priorities.

- Establish consistent expectations for opportunity qualification, pipeline management, forecasting, and progression.

- Maintain enterprise-level visibility into pipeline health, opportunity progression, competitive position, forecast accuracy, and conversion.

- Partner with P&L owners to establish sales priorities and drive execution against enterprise sales goals.

- Identify gaps, stalled opportunities, and execution risks and work with accountable leaders to address them.

- Ensure organizational resources and executive attention are appropriately aligned with priority opportunities.

- Drive accountability for actions and milestones required to advance opportunities through the pipeline.

Capture Management & Competitive Pursuits

- Lead the organization's approach to capture management for complex, competitive RFPs and major pursuits .

- Provide oversight, coaching, and direction to capture managers responsible for priority opportunities.

- Establish a consistent capture methodology addressing customer priorities, competitive positioning, win strategy, teaming, solution development, executive engagement, and pursuit milestones.

- Establish effective qualification, Go/No Go, and stage-gate disciplines.

- Facilitate structured capture reviews that assess readiness and competitive position, identify gaps, drive decisions, and establish clear actions and ownership.

- Help capture managers mobilize and coordinate multidisciplinary pursuit teams across business units.

- Partner with proposal teams, technical leaders, operations, P&L owners, and senior executives to ensure capture strategies translate effectively into proposals.

- Strengthen the organization's ability to position priority opportunities in advance of formal RFPs.

- Establish post-pursuit reviews and incorporate lessons learned into future capture practices.

Strategic Account Management

- Provide enterprise-level oversight and direction to Tier 1-3 account leads within a matrix organization .

- Establish a consistent enterprise methodology for strategic account management.

- Partner with account leads and business-unit leaders to develop actionable plans for priority accounts.

- Establish operating rhythms for reviewing account objectives, customer relationships, pipeline, competitive position, risks, and next actions.

- Ensure account plans translate into specific actions, opportunity development, and measurable progress.

- Coordinate executive sponsorship of priority accounts.

- Promote collaboration across business units to strengthen customer relationships and identify enterprise-wide opportunities.

- Develop account-management training, tools, and best practices that improve execution across the organization.

Qualifications

Required

- 10+ years of experience in the AEC industry, including at least 5 years of progressive leadership experience in business development, capture management, account management, sales operations, go-to-market leadership, or related roles.

- Deep understanding of capture management and strategic account management practices within an AEC or comparable professional-services environment.

- Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, or improving business development, capture-management, and account-management processes.

- Experience providing leadership and oversight to capture managers, account leads, business development professionals, or comparable commercial teams in a matrixed organization.

- Demonstrated experience leading or materially contributing to successful competitive pursuits and RFPs.

- A track record of contributing to sales growth, pipeline conversion, improved win rates, or other measurable business development outcomes.

- Experience in one or more of the following markets:

- Transportation

- Healthcare

- Higher education

- Data centers

- Proven ability to work effectively with senior executives and P&L owners within a matrix organization.

- Demonstrated ability to influence, align, and hold teams accountable without relying on direct reporting authority.

- Experience coordinating and program managing initiatives spanning multiple business units and functions.

- Strong facilitation, executive communication, presentation, and organizational skills.

- Ability to combine strategic thinking with detailed execution and follow-through.

Highly Desirable

- Significant experience with public-sector customers, procurement processes, and competitive RFPs .

- Experience implementing enterprise-wide capture-management and strategic account-management methodologies.

- Experience developing and delivering capture-management, account-management, and business-development training.

- Experience leading complex pursuits involving multiple operating businesses, technical disciplines, or geographic markets.

- Experience establishing enterprise sales and pipeline-management operating rhythms, metrics, and governance.

Education

- Bachelor's degree in engineering or business required.

- MBA a plus.

Success Measures

Success in this role will be measured by both commercial outcomes and improvement in the organization's ability to execute its go-to-market strategy consistently, including:

- Achievement of enterprise sales goals.

- Quality, value, and progression of the qualified pipeline.

- Conversion of pipeline into new business and revenue.

- Win rate on competitive pursuits.

- Capture rate on qualified strategic opportunities.

- Consistent adoption and effectiveness of enterprise capture-management processes.

- Consistent adoption and effectiveness of strategic account-management processes.

- Effectiveness of capture managers and strategic account leads in advancing priority opportunities and accounts.

- Forecast accuracy and visibility into pipeline health, risks, and required actions.

- Effectiveness of GTM training and capability development.

- Consistent execution of agreed-upon actions and milestones across priority accounts and pursuits.

- Effectiveness in coordinating senior executives, P&L owners, capture managers, account leads, and multiple business units around enterprise growth priorities.

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