Director of Commercial Programs

About Us 

Quantum Brilliance is a global leader in diamond-based quantum technology, specializing in the design, fabrication and manufacturing of small, ruggedized diamond quantum devices, operating at room temperature.

With operations in Australia and Germany, QB’s mission is to enable the mass deployment of quantum technology, facilitating its integration into everyday devices and high-performance quantum sensing computing systems.

QB has attracted world-leading scientific and commercial talent in Australia and Europe. Its international partnerships extend into North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific, and include governments, supercomputing centers, research organizations, and industry partners.

Role Purpose

The Director of Commercial Programs supports QB's Account Managers in keeping long, technically complex sales cycles moving, and may be the Account Manager for select accounts in their own right. This person makes sure customer engagements don't get stuck, coordinating the internal stakeholders needed to design each customer's initial engagement, and then managing the negotiation and contracting work (NDAs, teaming agreements, SOWs) that has to be resolved before a discovery project, PoC or design-in can actually proceed.

This person also owns the exploration of new commercial and government opportunities, including procurements, tenders and grants, and holds a strategic view across the whole pipeline so a new opportunity can be matched to the right existing or prospective customer rather than pursued in isolation. Where an opportunity is best pursued jointly with a partner, they lead the joint bidding process end-to-end: writing QB's sections of the response and working with the partner organisation to develop theirs, so the combined submission reads as one coherent, compliant proposal.

Location of the role could be in either Sydney or Canberra!

Skills & Compentencies

• Experience supporting Account Managers or BD teams through long, multi-stakeholder B2B sales cycles, able to spot a stalling engagement early and know what internal action unsticks it.
• Demonstrated experience planning and running customer discovery projects and proofs-of-concept, including scoping, SOWs/JDAs, technical coordination and follow-through, ideally in a hardware, deep-tech or dual-use technology company.
• Experience preparing customers for design-in of a hardware or component product: technical documentation, sample/prototype logistics and cross-functional readiness with Engineering.
• Comfortable building and maintaining commercial forecasts and running a pipeline review cadence in HubSpot or an equivalent CRM, translating pipeline stage and deal probability into numbers that hold up to leadership and Board scrutiny.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex, compliance-heavy bid or proposal responses (government tenders, RFQs, grants) from qualification through submission, including coordinating a joint or teamed bid with an external partner organisation.
• Strong understanding of government procurement processes, funding-program structures and compliance requirements (e.g. DSTG, DARPA, DoE, EU Horizon or equivalent).
• Working knowledge of commercial and contract-structuring concepts (NRE, licensing, preorder arrangements) sufficient to shape a compelling, protective commercial position within a proposal or agreement.
• Hands-on experience negotiating NDAs, teaming agreements and IP terms in a deep-tech or technology-licensing environment, comfortable working through background/foreground IP allocation, licensing scope, exclusivity, anti-reverse-engineering protections and government IP-rights clauses (e.g. DFARS/US Government IP rights, or equivalent) alongside Legal.
• Baseline technical fluency in quantum sensing or quantum computing concepts (or an adjacent deep-tech field), and excellent proposal writing skills able to translate complex technical content into clear, persuasive, compliant prose for evaluators.

Interpersonal & Collaborative skills

• A highly organised orchestrator, able to pull time-poor technical experts (Advanced Concepts, Product, Engineering) into discovery, design-in and bid work and extract high quality input under deadline pressure.
• A trusted internal partner and strong stakeholder manager across Account Managers, BD, Product, Marketing, Legal and external partners, proactive rather than reactive in surfacing where an account needs help.
• Confident operating close to executive leadership (CCO) and Legal on commercially sensitive positioning, pricing and IP decisions, and comfortable presenting pipeline status directly to the Board.
• Diligent, self-directed follow-through across many concurrent, early-stage relationships, calm under pressure with high attention to detail: a single compliance miss can disqualify a bid outright

Qualifications / Certification

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field (business, engineering, law or science) or equivalent experience; a technical background is an advantage given the scientific complexity of QB's product set.
• 5+ years' experience in bid management, capture management, sales/BD operations or government contracts, including supporting Account Managers through long sales cycles in a complex B2B environment, ideally within defence, aerospace or deep-tech/dual-use technology sectors.
• Experience managing customer discovery-to-PoC engagements and/or design-in readiness for a hardware or component product, and/or building and reporting commercial forecasts, ideally in an early-stage or high-growth commercialisation environment.
• Track record of leading successful submissions for government tenders, grants or large enterprise RFPs, including at least one joint or teamed submission with an external partner.
• Direct experience negotiating NDAs and IP terms (licensing, ownership, background/foreground IP) in a deep-tech, IP-rich company is highly regarded.
• Security clearance eligibility is advantageous given the nature of target customers and programs.