Director, Cyber R&D Strategy

Peraton

$176K — $282K *
Aerospace & Defense
15+ years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 16+ years of experience in business development or solution architecture roles
  • Bachelor's degree in engineering, science, business, or related field
  • Experience identifying and pursuing opportunities in cyber or adjacent domains
  • Strong understanding of research-focused customers and funding mechanisms
  • Proven ability to support or lead proposal development
  • Excellent communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences
  • Ability to travel for customer meetings and conferences
  • Active TS/SCI clearance

Responsibilities

  • Identify and pursue new business opportunities in cyber research
  • Build and maintain customer relationships to understand mission needs
  • Monitor research initiatives to anticipate future opportunities
  • Collaborate with leadership to align capabilities with customer needs
  • Lead capture activities and develop win strategies
  • Work with technical teams to create compelling solutions
  • Manage proposal development processes and timelines

Benefits

  • Support for professional development and continuous learning
  • Opportunity to work on cutting-edge cyber research
  • Engagement with a small, agile team
  • Access to a collaborative work environment
  • Potential for flexible scheduling or remote work options
Full Job Description
Responsibilities

Join the Peraton Labs team to provide business development and capture support with a focus on advanced Cyber research. This critical domain spans offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, cyber resilience, automated thread detection, and AI-enabled cyber operations. We are seeking a versatile business development and capture manager to help grow our cyber research portfolio by identifying new opportunities, shaping capture strategies, engaging customers, and coordinating proposal development. This role requires a blend of customer-facing business development skills, domain experience in cyber research, and hands-on proposal leadership. As part of a small, agile team, the successful candidate will take ownership across the opportunity lifecycle from early customer engagement through proposal submission and award.

Key responsibilities include:

Business Development and Opportunity Identification
  • Identify, qualify, and pursue new business opportunities across multiple customers in the cyber research domain
  • Develop and maintain strong customer relationships to understand mission needs, research priorities, and funding trends
  • Monitor solicitations, roadmaps, and research initiatives to anticipate future opportunities
  • Collaborate with management and technical leadership to align customer needs with organizational capabilities and strategic objectives


Capture and Solutioning
  • Lead capture activities, including win strategy development, competitive analysis, teaming, and solution shaping
  • Apply cyber domain expertise to inform approaches, discriminators, and value propositions
  • Work closely with architects, engineers, and researchers to develop compelling, executable solutions
  • Support pricing, risk identification, and execution planning in coordination with internal stakeholders


Proposal Management and Development
  • Serve as Proposal Manager for selected opportunities, particularly in support of a small-team environment
  • Develop proposal schedules, outlines, compliance matrices, and color team plans
  • Coordinate inputs from technical, management, and business contributors
  • Ensure proposals clearly articulate customer value, technical credibility, and competitive differentiation
  • Manage reviews, track action items, and ensure on-time delivery


Qualifications

Required Qualifications:
  • 16+ years of experience, including at least 5 years of experience in a business development or solution architecture roles
  • Bachelor's degree in engineering, science, business, or a related field.
  • Prior experience identifying and pursuing opportunities in cyber or adjacent domains
  • Ability to navigate unfamiliar customer organizations, develop and foster relationships, and secure meetings
  • Experience supporting or leading proposal development, including strategy, compliance and integration for competitive bids.
  • Strong understanding of research-focused customers, funding mechanisms, and acquisition processes
  • Ability to work across multiple opportunities simultaneously in a fast-paced environment
  • Self-motivated, independent, detail oriented, responsible team-player
  • Strong written and oral communication skills with an ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
  • Ability to travel regularly to support customer meetings and conferences
  • U.S. Citizenship and the ability to maintain a TS/SCI clearance


Desired Qualifications:
  • Familiarity and/or existing customer relationships with government research and acquisition organizations (AFRL, NRL, CYBERCOM, DIU, IC, etc.) and/or Cyber companies
  • Experience developing and managing relationships with partner companies
  • Prior technical and/or management experience in a software-intensive field

Security Clearance:

Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility

Target Salary Range

$176,000 - $282,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position. Salary is determined by various factors, including but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the individual's experience, education, knowledge, skills, and competencies, as well as geographic location and business and contract considerations. Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay.

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