Market & Business Development Leader - Energy Storage

About the role

We're looking for someone who genuinely enjoys figuring things out - someone who is curious, willing to test ideas, talk to customers early, and help separate the winners from the nice-to-have ideas. This role sits inside our Performance Materials team and will partner directly with a technical lead to take early-stage opportunities from rough concept through the Stage Gate process and toward commercialization.

Responsibilities

• Lead the commercial side of early-stage growth opportunities
• Oversee the commercial strategy for multiple platforms at once, helping shape where we focus our time and investment across the broader portfolio.
• Build a simple, clear commercial picture of each opportunity - who it’s for, why it matters, what they’re using today, and what would make them switch.
• Help guide ideas through Stage Gate by grounding decisions in real customer feedback instead of assumptions.
• Help set or refine the criteria we use to greenlight, pause, or stop opportunities, and bring a stronger voice into investment discussions at Stage Gate reviews.
• Talk to customers early and often
• Get out of the building: talk to potential users, buyers, engineers, and anyone who touches or specifies the product.
• Turn customer conversations into insights: what they value, what they ignore, what would make or break adoption.
• Shape early strategic marketing work without the jargon
• Identify the most promising segments and applications - not with a huge binder, but with a clear story about who cares and why.
• Translate customer needs into value propositions that make sense and can be tested.
• Work with Research & Technology technical team (R&T) to make sure development lines up with what customers need, not what we assume they’ll want.
• Define the long-term platform growth strategy, including where each opportunity fits and how we position ourselves across segments.
• Support commercialization without overpromising structure
• Help us define the basics: how it gets positioned, what matters for adoption, and where it logically fits in the value chain.
• Prepare the opportunity so that, when the time comes, a salesperson can pick it up and run with it.
• Lead the early commercialization strategy for one or more platforms, ensuring consistent positioning, pricing logic, and market messaging across related opportunities.
• Work across functions like a partner, not a coordinator
• Bring customer learning into technical discussions with R&T, Ops, Supply Chain, and others.
• Help the team stay honest about what the market cares about vs what we wish the market cared about.
• Show them real, practical insights from customers.

Requirements

• 5–10 years in B2B industrial markets such as chemicals, materials, automotive components, filtration, engineered products, or similar.
• Broad techno-economic understanding of different battery technologies and associated applications.
• Experience taking an idea from concept to something that real customers have seen, handled, reacted to, or tested preferably in energy storage markets.
• Experience with products that have technical differentiation or IP-protection, where the value has to be communicated clearly.
• Comfortable managing several early-stage opportunities at once and deciding which deserves more time and which don’t.
• Experience working closely with R&D, engineering, or technical teams and translating customer needs into technical development priorities.
• Exposure to specification-driven markets (automotive, electronics, industrial materials, engineered systems), where performance, testing, or application requirements shape adoption.
• Experience leading complex opportunity portfolios, influencing investment decisions, and shaping multi-year platform strategy is preferred.
• Experience coaching or leading other BD, product, or commercial team members is preferred.

Skills

• Strong curiosity - you need to enjoy asking questions and learning fast.
• Ability to test assumptions instead of polishing them.
• Solid executive communication skills: talking to customers, translating technical details, writing concise summaries, and influencing senior leaders’ decisions.
• Ability to work independently and move things forward with minimal instruction.
• Not afraid to say, “This idea isn’t strong enough- let’s stop investing here.”

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, chemistry, materials, business, or similar field required.
• MBA, technical graduate degree, and/or equivalent experience leading multi-function commercial/technical teams is preferred but not required.

Other Requirements

• Up to ~25 percent travel to customers, plants, or labs.
• Ability to be hands-on during early customer testing or trials.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States.