Director of Business Development, Middle East · Shield AI

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:01:56 GMT
Sales

Shield AI · Abu Dhabi · onsite
We are hiring a Director of Business Development to lead our Middle East growth strategy, building out a team responsible for significant annual orders targets. The ideal candidate will have deep defense, national security, or aerospace experience in the region, established government relationships, and a track record of closing complex defense programs. Key responsibilities include: * Owning and executing Middle East go-to-market strategy for Shield AI's product portfolio, including X-BAT, V-BAT, ViDAR, and Hivemind. * Maintaining direct responsibility for annual order targets, multi-year pipeline development, and order growth. * Leading end-to-end capture and sales efforts from early engagement through contract award and follow-on growth. * Engaging directly with senior military, government, and defense industry stakeholders across the region. * Differentiating Shield AI in competitive and regulated defense procurements. * Providing actionable market and customer intelligence to influence product roadmap and broader international strategy. Requirements include: * 10+ years business development experience across the Middle East region within defense, aerospace, or national security. * Specific prior defense or government-facing experience in the Middle East with a deep understanding of regional procurement processes, offset requirements, export sensitivities, local defense primes, and indigenization requirements. * Fluency in English (written and spoken). Fluency in Arabic strongly preferred. * Demonstrated success closing complex defense or government programs - ideally across both hardware (aircraft/UAS) and software (autonomy/ai). * Technical experience with autonomy, UAVs, ISR, and advanced sensing technologies. * Strong negotiation, relationship-building, and stakeholder management skills. * Ability to manage multiple concurrent pursuits, across multiple markets, involving technical products, in ambiguous environments. * Proven cross-functional leadership across operations, product, and BD teams. * Exceptional written, verbal, and presentation skills. * Willingness and ability to travel frequently in region and internationally (~25%). * Willingness and ability to work across multiple time zones (e.g. US HQ, Asia based colleagues, Middle East partners) * Based in or willing to relocate to the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates). * Mastery of critical business tools (Microsoft Suite – PPT, Excel, Word, LLMs, etc.) * Experience forecasting, tracking, and managing deal cycles using Salesforce.