Director, Deal Desk

DDN is seeking a high-impact Director, Deal Desk to serve as a strategic Finance partner to our Sales organization. This individual will be instrumental in building out the Deal Desk function, driving deal velocity, and ensuring the commercial viability of our largest, most complex transactions. You will act as the "air traffic controller" for the deal lifecycle - balancing aggressive market share growth with long-term margin and revenue integrity. Key Responsibilities Deal Structuring & Advisory: Act as the primary advisor to Sales for complex multi-product and multi-year deals. Build creative commercial structures (including ARR/Subscription models) that meet customer needs while protecting DDN margins. Commercial Guardrails: Help establish and enforce the global Approval Matrix. Cross-Functional Orchestration: Serve as the bridge between Sales, Legal, Finance, Operations to ensure seamless deal execution and revenue recognition. CPQ & Process Optimization: Partner with Sales Ops & IT to refine and scale our CPQ environment, implementing deal playbooks that reduce friction and decrease quote to booking timelines/ Margin Analysis: Utilize robust modeling tools to evaluate deal profitability and determine approval eligibility. Dual-Track Negotiation: Manage high-stakes negotiations both internally with Sales and externally with DDN Customers, leveraging executive presence to challenge deal structures and defend company margins. Executive Engagement: Present large-scale transactions to the executive team, providing a clear rationale for exceptions, risk assessments, and strategic alignment. Qualifications Experience: 8–12 years in Deal Desk, ideally within a high-growth tech environment (Storage, Cloud, or SaaS experience is a plus). Modeling Skills: Expert-level Excel proficiency. You must be comfortable "reverse-engineering" deals and building models to solve for specific margin and revenue targets. Strategic Thinking: Proven ability to move beyond "policing" deals to active "deal making" - identifying levers like Support attach rates, ARR pivots, and multi-year commitments to bridge gaps. Communication: Exceptional ability to translate complex financial structures into simple, persuasive terms for both Sales reps and Executive leadership. The "DDN Fit" Adaptable: You are comfortable ‘building the plane while flying it’ as we establish a new pricing methodology, formalize deal playbooks & enable the field. Time-Zone Resilient Operator: You take full ownership of the EMEA deal flow, managing local sales expectations and cross-functional hurdles independently, ensuring the "Deal Desk" never stops moving while the US headquarters is offline. Analytical Rigor: You leverage data as your primary lever for influence. From modeling complex margin floors to authorizing high-value exceptions, every approval you grant is backed by a clear, data-driven business case.