Business Development Manager - Defence

Valarian: A New Era of Sovereign Intelligence

Valarian is a dual use technology company building critical tools to safeguard the future in an era of evolving global security challenges. Backed by a Series A funding round of $50m led by NEA

, we are rethinking security beyond traditional military domains to address asymmetric threats that impact our technological advantage, economic strength, and democratic institutions. We provide the control infrastructure that allows government and regulated enterprise to put frontier-class AI to work safely.

We are bringing a frontier AI experience inside secure boundaries for the first time. Our technology supports mission critical workflows across government, healthcare, and enterprise, including:

• Scaling open-weight models without external inference endpoints.
• Putting frontier class AI to work across organisations through partnerships with other leading AI startups such as Perplexity.
• Increasing operational resiliency for air gapped, on prem, and cloud based systems.
• Securing intellectual property and maintaining auditability for high stakes enterprise environments.
• Facilitating secure information flow during disaster response, M&A due diligence, and privileged legal communications.

We’ve only scratched the surface. Built in Britain by veterans of the Ministry of Defence, British Forces, Darktrace, and elite engineering backgrounds, we are driven by a shared mission to safeguard western democracy . Whether you join our London HQ or our wider global organisation, you’ll be part of a collaborative, high performing team creating the cutting edge software and infrastructure that defines the frontier of enterprise AI.

The Role

As a Business Development Manager - Defence at Valarian, you will define and execute our defence market strategy with a strong focus on building and protecting our commercial ecosystem across government, primes, integrators and end users. You’ll be responsible for securing how our organisation operates in the defence market day-to-day: from account mapping and stakeholder engagement, to bid and capture management, to compliance and assurance across systems.

This is a hands-on leadership role combining strategy, architecture and execution. You’ll report directly to the Head of Delivery, and work closely with Product, Engineering, Legal, Compliance and Leadership to embed defence readiness into everything we build, while evolving our compliance posture across UK Government Security Classifications and relevant assurance frameworks.

What you’ll do:

• Oversee and execute Valarian’s defence business development strategy
• Build and mature our defence market posture, including security clearances, UK Government Security Classifications and relevant assurance requirements
• Design and implement a scalable go-to-market approach across government, primes, integrators and end users
• Work with Product and Engineering to ensure our offering is positioned and built for defence customers
• Build and maintain BD playbooks, standards and processes for defence sales
• Lead opportunity management, account mapping and pipeline generation
• Own bid and proposal development, capture management and responses to RFIs/RFPs
• Develop and manage relationships with primes, system integrators, government stakeholders and industry bodies
• Manage audits, certifications and engagement with external assessors and procurement teams
• Set metrics and reporting for pipeline, win rates and market penetration
• Hire, develop and lead a small, high-performing defence BD team

What you’ll bring:

• Proven experience leading in BD, defence, government or highly regulated B2G/B2B environments
• Deep knowledge of defence procurement and how to win in it
• Hands-on experience with capture management, bid and proposal development
• Experience managing an ecosystem of primes, integrators, government stakeholders and partners
• Practical experience with defence assurance and compliance, including UK Government Security Classifications and procurement frameworks
• Strong understanding of account mapping, stakeholder engagement and long sales cycles
• Experience using CRM and pipeline management tools
• Track record of building go-to-market capability from scratch in high-growth environments
• Ability to balance compliance and security requirements with speed to market
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication across technical, commercial and executive audiences
• Experience building or scaling BD/sales teams, or readiness to do so
• Focus on real outcomes, not box-ticking
• Security Clearance is preferable, but not essential
• Background is secondary to mindset. We want someone prepared to hustle, learn the defence landscape fast, and own outcomes. The successful candidate could be from any background.

Life at Valarian

Our culture is built on inclusivity, compassion and flexibility – we want everyone to be empowered to achieve their goals at Valarian.

The work we do is vital, but so are the connections that make it happen. We thrive on the shared energy, spontaneous conversations, and mutual trust built when we spend time together. We operate on an office first hybrid model, regularly gathering in our London office to support one another and collaborate.

We are committed to ensuring a fair and inclusive recruitment process and providing employment opportunities to all applicants. Decision recruitment, hiring, and employment are based solely on qualifications, skills, and experience relevant to the job requirements.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analysing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgement. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.