---
title: 'Principal Business Development Manager at Salient Motion'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-business-development-manager-salient-motion-hawthorne-ge1fdaea4ftd'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-03'
---

# Principal Business Development Manager at Salient Motion

- **Company:** Salient Motion
- **Location:** Hawthorne, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-10-29
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-03
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/salientmotion/jobs/5467487008

## Job description

Position Summary

The Principal Business Development Manager – Defense owns and grows Salient Motion's defense order pipeline, with primary focus on the missile actuation product line: control actuation systems (CAS), fin and canard actuators, electromechanical actuators (EMA), and thrust vector control (TVC). The mandate is to convert Salient's technical credibility into committed defense programs with missile and munitions primes, systems integrators, and U.S. Government customers.

This is the company's most senior individual-contributor capture role. It exists for someone who already holds the relationships, program knowledge, and technical fluency to shape requirements early, position Salient ahead of solicitation, and win. The role operates with a high degree of autonomy across the full business development lifecycle, from opportunity identification through contract award, and sets the capture standard that the rest of the business development team follows.

## Key Responsibilities

- Own the business development and capture strategy for the missile actuation product line, and identify adjacent growth opportunities across the broader defense portfolio.
- Build and manage a qualified opportunity pipeline across current and multi-year pursuits; forecast accurately and maintain CRM discipline that leadership can plan against.
- Lead capture end to end: shape requirements early, develop win strategy and price-to-win, position Salient ahead of solicitation, and drive internal gate reviews to decision.
- Cultivate and expand executive- and program-level relationships with missile and munitions primes, Tier 1 suppliers, and relevant U.S. Government program offices.
- Track the DoD acquisition and budget cycle (PPBE/POM), monitor programs of record and emerging requirements, and translate that intelligence into actionable pursuits.
- Orchestrate responses to Sources Sought, RFIs, and RFPs in partnership with proposal, engineering, contracts, and pricing to produce compliant, compelling submissions.
- Direct the external business development and lead-generation agencies supporting top-of-funnel activity, and ensure qualified opportunities transition cleanly into the capture pipeline.
- Represent Salient Motion at trade shows, industry days, and customer engagements as a credible technical and commercial voice for the actuation portfolio.
- Feed competitive intelligence and voice-of-customer input back to product line management and engineering to inform roadmap and investment decisions.
- Serve as a capture mentor and standard-bearer for less-experienced business development staff, without direct reporting authority.
- Ensure all activity complies with ITAR/EAR export controls, FAR/DFARS requirements, and internal business conduct standards.

Required Qualifications

- 12+ years of business development, capture, or program-facing experience in aerospace and defense, with a demonstrable record of personally winning new business at the prime or Tier 1 level.
- Direct experience with missile, munitions, precision-guided weapons, or flight control and actuation products and the customers who buy them.
- Demonstrated ownership of full-lifecycle captures, including win strategy, price-to-win, and competitive positioning on pursuits of meaningful scale.
- Working knowledge of electromechanical or hydraulic actuation systems sufficient to hold credible technical discussions with customers and internal engineering, unaided.
- Established, active network among defense primes, systems integrators, and DoD program offices that can be brought to bear immediately.
- Deep working understanding of the DoD acquisition process, the federal budget cycle, and FAR/DFARS contracting.
- Proven ability to operate autonomously in a lean, high-growth environment and to lead cross-functional pursuit teams through influence rather than authority.
- Active U.S. DoD Secret clearance, or the demonstrated ability to obtain one.
- S. citizenship, required for ITAR-controlled work and clearance.
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- Ability to travel up to 40%, domestic with occasional international.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Formal capture or proposal management training (Shipley or equivalent).
- TS/SCI clearance or eligibility.
- Existing executive-level relationships at one or more major missile prime contractors.
- Experience building a defense pipeline from a small or early-stage supplier base rather than inheriting an established franchise.
- MBA or relevant advanced degree.

What Success Looks Like

- Within two quarters, a healthy and accurately forecast pipeline of qualified missile actuation and defense opportunities that leadership can plan and invest against.
- Competitive captures won on the pursuits that matter most to the actuation portfolio.
- Durable prime and program-office relationships that position Salient Motion as a preferred actuation partner on current and emerging programs.
- A raised capture standard across the business development function, evidenced in the quality of pursuit strategy and gate reviews company-wide.

Salient Motion is an equal opportunity employer. This position requires access to information subject to U.S. export control regulations (ITAR/EAR); applicants must be U.S. Persons as defined therein. Employment is contingent on the ability to obtain and maintain the required security clearance.

## About Salient Motion

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Salient Motion designs and manufactures critical electromechanical actuation systems for commercial aviation and defense, replacing legacy supply chains with modular, software-defined motion control.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Torrance, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Vishaal Mali (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Aviation and Aerospace Component Manufacturing, Defense
- **Target Customers**: OEMs (e.g., Boeing), MROs, and defense contractors for commercial airliners and military platforms (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission**: To change the paradigm of legacy aerospace and defense supply chains, unlocking a new era of speed, innovation, and possibility.

## Products & Services
- **Critical Actuation Systems**: Advanced electromechanical actuators (linear and rotary) for flight control, landing gear, and other mission-critical functions on commercial and military aircraft.
- **Software-First Architecture**: A modular, software-defined actuation platform that decouples control logic from hardware. Core motor control software is certified to DO-178C standards as a reusable library, enabling rapid configuration and validation across platforms.
- **Certification Services**: Certification-centric engineering built from day one, aiming for up to 10x reductions in cost and lead time for certifiable products.
- **Support & Sustainment**: Direct, fast, and personal support for integration, troubleshooting, and sustainment of actuation systems.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of **$4.0M** (Seed round led by Cantos VC in October 2024, with participation from AE Ventures and Ian Rountree; a Pre-Seed round occurred in November 2022)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Cantos (Lead), AE Ventures, Ian Rountree. Key customer/partner: **Boeing** (collaborating on certifying modular actuators for commercial airliners).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of ~30 employees with +15.2% monthly growth; talent sourced from Anduril Industries, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and other top aerospace/defense firms; active job postings increasing +200% month-over-month; expansion to a second office in Irvine, CA.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Software-First Modularity**: Their core differentiator is a software-defined architecture that is certified as a reusable library (DO-178C). This allows for rapid, low-cost configuration for different aircraft platforms, offering a 10x improvement in lead time and cost over legacy suppliers.
- **Vertically Integrated Supply Chain**: Streamlined engineering workflows and vertically integrated partnerships enable delivery of actuator systems in weeks, not quarters.
- **Certification-First Approach**: All systems are designed with certification in mind from day one, drastically reducing the time and cost to achieve airworthiness.
- **Legacy Disruption**: They offer a direct alternative to high-cost, slow-moving legacy OEM suppliers, providing certified solutions without overhead markup.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale Production**: Moving from design and prototyping to manufacturing and delivery at scale, as evidenced by hiring for Senior Manufacturing Engineer and Quality Manager roles.
- **Expand Customer Base**: Deepening the partnership with Boeing while expanding to other commercial and defense OEMs.
- **Domestic Supply Chain**: Developing motors and inverters using domestic resources to meet national security imperatives.
- **Platform Development**: Refining their core "electric motion operating system," including standalone inverters, web-based configuration platforms, and performant motors.

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact Work**: Employees solve some of the hardest motion control challenges in aerospace and defense, with work that directly impacts millions of daily passengers.
- **Culture**: Described as a high-velocity environment emphasizing "Extreme Entrepreneurship," "Execution Over Excuses," and "Mastery Over Ego." The culture values ownership, creativity, and a relentless focus on execution.
- **Strong Talent Pool**: Team includes veterans from Anduril, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX, providing a steep learning curve and high-performance peer group.
- **Work Policy**: **In-Office** (Torrance, CA and Irvine, CA). The company explicitly values in-person collaboration.
- **Growth Trajectory**: Early-stage (Seed) with rapid headcount growth, offering significant upside and career acceleration for early employees.

## Sources
1. [salientmotion.com](https://salientmotion.com/)
2. [salientmotion.com](https://salientmotion.com/careers)
3. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/salient-motion)
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/salient-motion)

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