Business Development Director – Supply Chain Center of Excellence (CoE)
Cognite operates at the forefront of industrial digitalization, building AI and data solutions that solve the world's hardest, highest-impact problems. With unmatched industrial heritage and a comprehensive suite of AI capabilities, including low-code AI agents, Cognite accelerates the digital transformation to drive operational improvements. Our Moonshot is bold: Unlock $100B in customer value by 2035, and redefine how global industry works.
Cognite is a global industrial Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company enabling the full-scale digital transformation of heavy-asset industries. Our core software product, Cognite Data Fusion (CDF), powers companies with contextualized OT/IT data to develop and scale solutions that increase safety, sustainability, and operational efficiency while driving revenue.
Location: Field / Remote. Travel: Approximately 50% (Client sites & Texas / Arizona offices)
About the role
As a Business Development Director within our Supply Chain Center of Excellence (CoE), you will drive Cognite's growth by winning new Supply Chain business within accounts headquartered in your territory. Operating as a subject matter expert, you will leverage deep domain insights to help customers transform their supply chain value chain using Cognite Applications and the Cognite Data Fusion Platform.
Responsibilities
- Territory & CoE Strategy: Develop and execute a targeted territory strategy to accelerate bookings growth and secure high-impact supply chain clients.
- Pipeline Generation: Actively prospect and leverage your personal network to generate pipeline, providing compelling "commercial insights" on optimizing the supply chain value chain.
- Complex Sales Execution: Lead extended territory teams (including pre-sales and technical experts) through complex enterprise sales cycles to exceed bookings targets.
- Value-Based Selling: Quantify ROI and present strong business cases to help enterprise executives justify software investments.
- Partner-savvy: Work with partners to qualify and progress their pipeline, and drive joint engagements on qualified opportunities.
- Deal Negotiation: Support the Account / Engagement Leader in negotiating favorable pricing and commercial terms with C-level executives by demonstrating the long-term strategic value of Cognite's solutions.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with internal Product Management and Marketing teams to feed real-market supply chain insights back into product strategy.
- Sales Hygiene & Forecasting: Support the Account Leaders and their First Line Managers in accurately forecasting monthly/quarterly bookings and maintaining up-to-date account records in Salesforce.com.
Core Competencies
- Domain & Industry Expertise: Deep domain expertise in complex Supply Chain operations for Energy, Manufacturing or Power Utilities verticals. Understanding of Production operations and industry x.0 initiatives is also required.
- Strategic Value Selling: Ability to sell value and build quantified ROI frameworks for prospective buyers.
- Informal Leadership, Influence & Autonomy: High degree of self-motivation, time management, and ability to informally lead and effectively influence cross-functional deal teams.
- Executive Communication: Stellar presentation, written, and verbal communication skills tailored for C-suite engagement.
Knowledge & Technical Requirements
- Enterprise Software/SaaS: Proven mastery of selling complex analytics or data platforms (e.g., AI, Big Data, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Machine Learning).
- Data Ecosystems: Familiarity with modern data architectures and tools, such as Big Data frameworks (Hadoop, Spark, Hive, BigQuery), Data Warehouses, and Machine Learning.
Qualifications
- Industry Experience: 10+ years of experience in the Manufacturing and broader industrial supply chain environment.
- Sales Track Record: 7+ years of direct or in-support sales experience, selling enterprise software/SaaS (BI, Big Data, Advanced Analytics, or AI/ML) to C-level executives, Management and operations.
- Proven Performance: Demonstrated history of consistently meeting or exceeding SaaS bookings goals in direct / partner / channel-based sales models.
- Environment Experience: Prior experience operating in high-growth startup environments (Series A, B, or C stage).
- Education: Bachelor's degree required.
Benefits
- Competitive compensation
- 401(k) with employer matching
- Competitive health, dental, vision & disability coverages for employees and all dependents
- Unlimited PTO
- Paid Parental Leave Program
- Employee Referral Program