Director of Business Development, Central US
About the role
Strategic and technical Business Development Director responsible for growing Gridware's commercial presence across the Central US, owning full-cycle enterprise sales with a heavy technical emphasis to utilities.
Responsibilities
- 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.
Qualifications
- 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.
Benefits
- Health, Dental & Vision (Gold and Platinum with some providers plans fully covered)
- Paid parental leave
- Alternating day off (every other Monday)
- “Off the Grid”, a two week per year paid break for all employees.
- Commuter allowance
- Company-paid training
About Gridware
Protecting the grid today, preparing the grid for tomorrow
Gridware exists to enhance and protect the mother of all networks: the electrical grid. The grid touches everyone and makes our modern economy possible. But it’s also fragile. When the grid is compromised, everything grinds to a halt, and the consequences can be dire: wildfires burn, land is destroyed, property is damaged, progress stops, and lives are lost. Our team builds smart sensors that help utility companies to immediately detect, find, and fix outages and take steps to prevent new outages, and other related disasters, from happening at all. The need for power will only increase. We protect the grid of today while we build the grid of tomorrow. Gridware is privately held and backed by the best climate-tech and Silicon Valley investors. We are headquartered in the Bay Area in northern California.
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