Director of Business Development, Central US

Territory Ownership 

• Own and manage a defined territory of investor-owned utilities across the Central U.S., including Texas, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and neighboring states. 

• Build and maintain a robust pipeline of qualified opportunities. 

• Develop multi-threaded relationships across utility organizations — field, engineering, operations, asset management, grid modernization, and C-suite stakeholders. 

Enterprise Sales Execution 

• Drive complex, technical, multi-stakeholder sales cycles from initial outreach through contract execution, typically ~18 months in length. 

• Lead discovery, technical presentations, pilot structuring, and commercial negotiations with support from revenue leadership. 

• Develop account strategies and territory plans; bring a disciplined, process-driven approach to forecasting and pipeline management. 

• Partner with sales engineering and regulatory teams to define pilots that ensure prospects experience clear, measurable value. 

Market Development 

• Represent Gridware at utility industry events and conferences (e.g., EEI, DistribuTECH) to build brand presence in the Central Region. 

• Gather and synthesize market intelligence — customer needs, competitive dynamics, regulatory drivers — to inform product roadmap and GTM strategy. 

• Work closely with marketing and product to develop region-specific messaging and materials. 

• 7+ years of technical sales or consulting experience directly with electric utilities. 

• Demonstrated ability to convey and respond to technical engineering questions without additional internal support.  

• Deep familiarity with the investor-owned utility landscape — procurement processes, regulatory environments, and key stakeholders. 

• Strong executive presence and ability to build trust with both senior leaders (VP/C-suite) as well as frontline individual contributors. 

• Experience managing long-cycle, technically complex sales processes involving multiple stakeholders. 

• Self-directed and resourceful; comfortable creating structure in an early-stage, fast-moving environment. 

• Willingness to travel 40-50% within the Central Region. 

• An engineering degree with 2+ years industry experience working with/for electric utilities on T&D planning/engineering projects. 

• Professional engineering licensure. 

• Experience selling hardware/software platform solutions (sensors, IoT, SaaS) into utilities or critical infrastructure. 

• Knowledge of distribution grid operations, engineering, protection, asset management, or wildfire mitigation programs. 

• Networked into several major Central Region IOUs