Business Development Manager – Turnaround Strategy and Origination

This role will be based at one of our facilities in Houston, TX, Wichita, KS, or Baton Rouge, LA. This is a national overlay role built for someone who creates turnaround opportunity before it appears in the pipeline, through relationships, collaboration, research, data analysis, and market insight, not by managing accounts we already serve. This role is deliberately distinct from our regional account management roles.

About KSPS

KSPS is the industry expert in installation, inspection, and technical project services for tower, vessel, combustion, and mass transfer equipment in the refining and chemicals industry. We support customers across the full lifecycle of construction and turnaround projects, helping reduce downtime, improve reliability, and drive long-term operational performance.

Responsibilities

• Commercial Strategy
  • Develop creative solutions and value propositions that align customer needs with our competitive advantages
  • Lead sales strategy development—defining where to play and how to win across markets, customers, and service lines
• Opportunity Creation & Pipeline Development
  • Identify and pursue new market whitespace before formal demand exists—building pipeline without relying on inbound opportunities
  • Develop and manage a long-cycle pursuit pipeline across target markets and customers
  • Shape demand early in the customer planning cycle—engaging at pre-RFQ stages to influence scope and competitive positioning
• Customer & Market Engagement
  • Build relationships and map decision-makers across target accounts in refining, petrochemical, and chemicals markets
  • Engage with industry networks to develop new channels and strategic partnerships
  • Gather and apply voice-of-customer insights to shape commercial strategy and differentiated service offerings
• Research, Data Analysis & Turnaround Intelligence
  • Build and maintain a forward-looking map of industry turnaround schedules and cycles (refining/petrochemical/chemical) to anticipate where and when major scope will emerge
  • Leverage and synthesize data from KES's market analysis team and KSPS commercial operations—sales, Salesforce pipeline, forecast, and win/loss—to surface patterns, underpenetrated accounts, and recurring whitespace the regional view can miss
  • Track market trends—regulatory drivers, unit/capacity changes, reliability and feedstock shifts, decarbonization and retrofit activity—and translate into turnaround opportunities
  • Develop data-driven account and market prioritization: where to play, where we're already first-choice, and where competitors are exposed
  • Produce opportunity briefs and trend analyses that give Regional Account Managers and leadership foresight, not just current-state status
• Internal Leadership & Collaboration
  • Bring the right subject matter experts into the right conversations at the right time to advance pursuits
  • Partner across organizational capabilities to integrate long-cycle opportunities into execution plans
  • Represent the voice of the market internally—translating customer and market intelligence into actionable strategies

Requirements

• Experience in business development, strategic sales, or commercial origination within industrial services
• Demonstrated ability to build pipeline, sales plans and win business that was not previously in play
• Proven track record engaging decision-makers with industrial end users
• Comfort operating in long, ambiguous sales cycles (1–3+ years) with limited structure or inbound support
• Leverages, synthesizes and connects existing market, sales, and pipeline data (in partnership with our market analysis and commercial operations teams), identifies gaps, and turns it into strategic plans and roadmaps. Strategy-building from available data matters more here than deep data-analysis expertise
• Willingness to travel up to 50% nationally

Qualifications

• Experience and credibility in the industrial turnaround / plant construction space—able to speak the language of TAR managers, planners, and field execution
• Established network across refining, petrochemical, chemicals
• Background in demand shaping, solution selling, origination
• Experience developing and executing multi-year go-to-market strategies in new or adjacent markets

Benefits

Our goal is for each employee, and their families, to live fulfilling and healthy lives. We provide essential resources and support to build and maintain physical, financial, and emotional strength—focusing on overall wellbeing so you can focus on what matters most. Our benefits plan includes:

• Medical, dental, vision, flexible spending and health savings accounts
• Life insurance, ADD, disability, retirement
• Paid vacation/time off, educational assistance
• May also include infertility assistance, paid parental leave and adoption assistance

Specific eligibility criteria is set by the applicable Summary Plan Description, policy or guideline and benefits may vary by geographic region.

Pay

Any compensation range provided for a role is an estimate determined by available market data. The actual amount may be higher or lower than the range provided considering each candidate's knowledge, skills, abilities, and geographic location.