Senior Director, Business Development – Physical AI, Robotics & Drones (Europe & APAC)

Job Details

Job Description:

Senior Director, Business Development – Physical AI, Robotics & Drones (Europe & APAC)

Role Overview

• Senior executive who owns business development for Physical AI, Robotics and Drones/UAS across Europe and Asia-Pacific
• Based at a Europe or APAC hub, with about 40–50% travel
  
  

• Set the regional BD strategy and account plan for Robotics and Drones in Europe and APAC, aligned with the central segment share-gain strategy
• Personally own the largest strategic accounts: robot and drone OEMs, humanoid and AMR makers, robot controller and management-platform vendors, and commercial and defense-adjacent drone makers
• Negotiate multi-year, multi-million-dollar deals: custom, NRE and strategic-supply agreements, and pricing below list through the deal desk
• Run design-win pursuits from first executive meeting to design-in, bringing in Solution Architects for the technical sell and requesting PoCs through the PoC intake process
• Build executive relationships at the CTO, VP Engineering and procurement level with regional OEMs, Tier-1s, system integrators and distributors
• Build the regional partner network: autonomy stacks, flight controllers, sensors (vision, LiDAR, radar), motor control, and board and module partners
• Lead NDA roadmap briefings with PLM to win designs before silicon ships
• Report regional market intelligence (competitor chip and GPU designs, policy, funding, standards) to the segment owners and Portfolio Planning, with requirements quantified in dollars
• Own the regional pipeline and forecast, with every number reconciled to the single source of truth before leadership reviews
• Represent Altera as its senior voice at key regional events and industry groups
• Work with regional Sales and Field Marketing to keep roles clear: BD shapes the deal before commitment, Sales books it, and Field Marketing runs demand programs
  
  

• Design-win value and count in Europe and APAC for Robotics and Drones
• Qualified pipeline and revenue growth against plan
• Share gain in target sockets and accounts
• Conversion of strategic accounts and new lighthouse customers
• Forecast accuracy and quality of requirements fed to Planning
  
  

• SVP and Sr. Director, Vertical Marketing; Physical AI & Robotics and Drones/UAV segment owners
• VP, Solution Engineering, and the regional Solution Architects
• Regional Sales VPs and distribution partners
• PLM, Portfolio Planning, and the Business Management deal desk
• Regional Field Marketing (Scale)
  
  

• BS in Electrical/Computer Engineering or related field; MBA preferred
• 15+ years in semiconductor or embedded-systems BD, sales or product marketing, including 7+ years at a senior level
• Proven record of large strategic design wins and major deals with OEMs in Europe and/or Asia
• Deep existing network in robotics, industrial automation or drones in at least one region, and the ability to build one quickly in the other
• Strong technical fluency: motor control, functional safety, sensor fusion, edge AI inference, real-time compute, ROS 2, flight control and datalinks, and where FPGAs win against SoCs and GPUs
• Comfortable working across time zones and cultures
• Working knowledge of export control and dual-use regulation (EAR/ITAR, EU Dual-Use Regulation)
• Fluent English; German, French, Japanese, Korean or Mandarin a strong plus
  
  

• FPGA or adaptive-compute background
• Experience with humanoid or AMR start-ups, or with NATO or allied-APAC defense drone programs
• Familiarity with IEC 61508, ISO 13849, DO-178C and DO-254
• Uses AI tools to speed up account planning and deal preparation