Technical sales manager

Simera Sense is a leading provider of Earth observation camera solutions for the global small satellite market. Committed to excellence and innovation, we deliver superior products and services to our worldwide customer base.

Are you passionate about building customer relationships and driving business growth through technical solutions? We are seeking a results-driven Technical Sales Manager to identify new opportunities, develop strategic customer partnerships, and deliver tailored solutions that create value for both our customers and our business.

Position Type:

Fulltime

Remote Opportunity:

No

Report To:

Chief Commercial Officer

Location:

Leuven, Belgium

Job Purpose:

To serve as the technical link between Simera Sense's commercial and engineering functions, ensuring that customer commitments are technically sound, clearly communicated and achievable, by supporting technical client engagements, aligning payload solutions with mission requirements, contributing to proposal development, and translating client feedback into insights that inform sales and marketing strategy.

Responsibilities:

• Revenue Growth and Opportunity Development: Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, including ground support equipment, image processing, calibration, flatsat/EFM models and SSA applications.
• Commercial Risk and Cost Control: Validate feasibility, schedule and cost inputs from Engineering and Production before they are committed to customers.
• Pre-Sales Technical Support: Own technical support for prospects from first contact through to proposal and negotiation, working with the assigned Sales Manager or Business Developer.
• Mission Fit and Solution Advice: Lead structured requirement-qualification discussions on mission objectives, orbit, platform class, GSD/GRD, swath, spectral bands, accuracy, revisit, data volume, downlink, SWaP-C, schedule and budget.
• Customer Confidence and Trust: Present Simera Sense's flight heritage, qualification and test evidence, quality management approach and delivery track record clearly, credibly and honestly.
• Sales–Engineering Interface: Act as the single technical point of contact between Sales/BD and the engineering, development and production teams on all customer-related technical matters.
• Proposal Development: Support Sales and BD in compiling technical and commercial proposals, and write and edit the technical volumes.
• Handover and Configuration Control: Own the Product Configuration Document (PCD) during pre-sales and hand it over to the Contract Managers.
• Customer and Market Insight: Log all technical customer interactions, requirements, objections, competitor mentions and feedback in the CRM accurately and promptly.
• Strategy and Product Improvement: Use customer insights to refine target segments, value propositions, messaging, pipeline priorities and sales plays, in collaboration with Sales, BD and Marketing.
• Technical Knowledge and Thought Leadership: Build and maintain a library of technical proof points, including case studies, use cases, in-orbit performance data, sample imagery and customer references.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in aerospace, Electrical/Electronic, Mechanical or Systems Engineering, Optics/Photonics, Physics or Remote Sensing, or an equivalent technical qualification
• Minimum years of work experience: 3 or more years of experience in technical sales, sales engineering, pre-sales, systems engineering or proposal management, ideally in the space, satellite, aerospace or defence sector.

Required Experience:

• Demonstrated experience writing or compiling technical proposals and responding to RFI/RFQ/RFP documents.
• Working knowledge of EO payloads, optical systems, satellite integration, remote sensing and image-quality concepts (GSD, MTF, SNR, radiometric/geometric accuracy, NIIRS).
• Experience working with customers such as satellite manufacturers, integrators, agencies, defence/government end users and EO data providers.
• Experience with CRM systems and data analysis for sales and market insight.

Recommendations:

• Master’s degree in aerospace, Electrical/Electronic, Mechanical or Systems Engineering, Optics/Photonics, Physics or Remote Sensing.
• Proficiency in Dutch, French or Afrikaans is an advantage.

Special Requirements:

• Hybrid office-based role with regular collaboration across European and South African time zones.
• International travel is expected for customer visits, technical meetings, trade shows and conferences.
• Occasional evening or weekend work may be required to meet proposal deadlines.

What we offer:

• The opportunity to work in the fast-growing space industry.
• Niche global market for optical payloads for microsatellites.
• Cutting-edge technology at your fingertips.
• A competitive salary.
• A friendly working environment.

Ready to make an impact? Apply now by submitting your CV and cover letter.