Business Development Lead, Digital Resilience & Cybersecurity

The Business Development Lead for Digital Resilience and Cybersecurity at CRDF Global leads new business capture and shaping across our Digital Resilience and Cybersecurity Mission Area.  This role owns the development of innovative, compliant, and competitive proposals by integrating capture strategy, program operations, and proposal development.  Acting as a strategic bridge across teams, the Digital Resilience BD Lead shapes win themes, aligns solutions to funder priorities, and positions CRDF Global to successfully compete for U.S. federal and international donor funding across digital resilience and cybersecurity domains.  

Major Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership and Vision

• Define a clear digital resilience and cybersecurity growth vision for CRDF Global, including target customers, priority mission areas (e.g., cyber capacity building, critical infrastructure resilience, counter-disinformation, secure emerging tech), and differentiated value propositions.

• Lead the execution of a multi-year portfolio strategy that aligns CRDF’s technical capabilities, partnerships, and market position with anticipated donor, U.S. government, and international market demand.

• Monitor threat trends, technology shifts (AI, quantum, advanced analytics, cloud, etc.), donor priorities and competitive activity to continually refine strategic priorities and solution focus areas.

Collaboration with Existing Program Teams

• Proactively engage with current CRDF program managers, technical leads, and delivery teams to understand existing cyber and emerging technology capabilities, and tools.

• Inventory and map current services, solutions, and lessons learned from ongoing programs to identify reusable components, accelerators, and success stories for new pursuits.

• Partner with program teams during capture to validate solution feasibility, refine estimates, and ensure proposed architectures can be delivered within operational constraints.

Client and Market Engagement

• Client Engagement and Requirement Shaping - lead direct engagement with new customers and partners to understand mission drivers, pain points, and success criteria, including pre-RFI and pre-RFP conversations.

• Shape requirements by offering solution concepts, architectures, and implementation pathways that influence customer thinking and position CRDF as a trusted advisor.

• Build and maintain strong relationships with key client stakeholders, including program managers, technical leads, and contracting personnel, to gain insight into upcoming needs and acquisition strategies.

• Support CRDF Global’s Digital Resilience and Cybersecurity portfolio at conferences, trade shows, donor consultations, and regional workshops, including events CRDF hosts or co-hosts.

Integrated BD and Capture Responsibilities

• Maintain an integrated view of the Digital Resilience and cybersecurity pipeline, entering, updating and maturing opportunities from early shaping through capture and proposal submission.

• Partner with program leaders to regularly review and qualify new opportunities, prioritize based on strategic fit and win probability.

• Plan and coordinate solution, capture, and proposal resources (technical SMEs, writers, pricing, program staff) to support pursuits without overloading enterprise and program resources.

• Lead opportunity captures, including call plans, solution themes, and competitive positioning.

• Lead gate reviews with clear articulation of client needs, shaped requirements, solution concepts, and how existing CRDF capabilities will be leveraged.

• Lead the technical thread in proposals, integrating inputs from program SMEs and ensuring consistency between solution, staffing past performance, and management approaches.

• Other duties as assigned.

Required Skills and Experience

• Proven track record leading federal BD/capture/proposal efforts in Cybersecurity field; understanding of DoS, DoD and or civilian agency requirements and acquisition processes.

• Strong skills in requirements analysis, concept development, solution outlining, and producing technical volumes, diagrams, and staffing/risk approaches that are both compelling and executable.

• Experience leading front-end client engagement, including discovery sessions, whiteboarding, and pre-RFI/RFP conversations that shape requirements and position the organization as a trusted advisor.

• Ability to quickly understand client missions and constraints, then translate them into solution roadmaps and clear narratives

• Strong facilitation skills to lead capability deep dives, internal workshops, and cross-functional solution teams that include BD, programs, technologists, and partners.

• Familiarity with pipeline management, forecasting, and opportunity qualification in tools such as Salesforce, GovWin, or similar platforms.

• Ability to plan and coordinate solution and proposal resources, balance capture needs against delivery realities, and highlight capability gaps that drive hiring or partnering decisions.

• Demonstrated ability to manage stakeholders, lead cross-functional solution teams, and present technical concepts to non-technical audiences.

Desired Qualifications

• 10 years’ experience architecting federal solutions in cybersecurity, advanced IT, or emerging technology with experience in international markets preferred

• Willingness for occasional and short-term travel (domestic and international) to support clients, captures, and key market events.

• Active security clearance or eligibility to obtain one preferred.