Director of Growth, US

Rowden is one of Europe's fastest-growing companies, building operational edge systems for defense, national security, and emergency response teams.

Veteran-founded in the UK in 2017, we turn advances in AI, sensing, and communications into practical capability for environments where connectivity is limited, degraded, or denied. Our focus is on getting useful technology into the hands of frontline teams faster, improving decision-making, and protecting people and critical assets.

We've grown to more than 200 employees, with a strong track record delivering critical programs for the UK Ministry of Defence and other national security customers. Alongside this, we're developing our own export-focused hardware and software products across RF and fleet management.

In 2026, Rowden secured £25 million from the UK's National Wealth Fund to accelerate growth across the UK and internationally.

We're now building on strong customer and partner traction in the United States, and this role will be part of Rowden's founding US team.

About the role

The Rowden Director of Growth, US exists to convert Rowden’s product portfolio, engineering credibility and mission focus into funded contracts, strategic partnerships and repeatable revenue in the US market. This is a founding commercial role, made for someone entrepreneurial who wants a career-defining challenge with significant upside.

Your product focus will be Rowden’s software-defined RF decoy product range, built in direct response to live operational needs in Ukraine. The first product, Mimic, was awarded the Army Technology Excellence Award for EW Product Launch in 2025, with additional products in development in response to demand. As you grow into the role, you will also take responsibility for scaling Rowden’s Dovetail product line, an edge device management platform designed to configure and orchestrate fleets of disparate autonomous devices.

You will report directly to UK leadership with support across central legal, finance, commercial, recruitment and operations teams. You will also work closely with Rowden’s Mission Success Lead, US on user insight and product feedback. You will take ownership of Rowden’s US footprint, shaping the Rowden brand and market position, with the ability to hire additional resources to support scaling over time. Alongside this commercial remit, you will lean in operationally to support building Rowden’s US business, including supporting hiring, facilities, and compliance processes.

We are looking for a former operator, program office lead, or technical delivery lead who has since moved into a senior commercial role at a US defense contractor. Your background should be in complex systems, and you should have personally closed contracts across the full cycle of innovation funding, from SBIR (or FCT and allied innovation pathways) and OTA through to PPBE.

Our compensation packages are highly competitive and structured to create meaningful upside for strong performance.

Ideally you'll already be based within North Carolina or be willing to relocate for this opportunity. You will cover a wide remit with a unique level of ownership: identifying and shaping new opportunities, owning the opportunity lifecycle end to end, building partnerships across the defense industrial base, leading commercial negotiations, representing Rowden with government and industry stakeholders, feeding market insights into the product roadmap and pricing, and maintaining alignment with UK leadership. Identify and shape new sales opportunities early, often well before a formal requirement exists, positioning Rowden’s product and brand credibly for each opportunity and audience, whether that be end users, commercial teams, or strategic decision-makers.

• Own the full opportunity lifecycle end to end, from first engagement through to signed contract, understanding how a trial, exercise, CRADA, FCT funding, OTA, or innovation activity can create the access and leverage needed for funded follow-on work, and exercising the judgment to prioritize and run hard at what’s most likely to convert.
• Build and manage strategically valuable partnerships and relationships across the US defense industrial base, including primes, OEMs and relevant industry groups.
• Lead commercial negotiations that support Rowden’s customer access, pricing power, IP protection, ability to deliver effectively and long-term scalability.
• Represent Rowden credibly with senior government and industry stakeholders, briefing our growth plans and products in line with our values and principles.
• Feed structured, technically grounded insights from customers, partners, and competitors into Rowden’s product roadmap and pricing models.
• Maintain regular, proactive two-way communication with UK leadership, engineering, product, and commercial teams to ensure there is strong alignment around pursuits, pipeline health, product roadmap, market positioning, and resource gaps.
• Take on operational responsibility for building Rowden’s US presence, supporting hiring, facilities, and compliance processes.

What will make this role exciting

You will be given significant autonomy and upside backed by an established, fast-growth UK business. You will have a running start with a differentiated product portfolio and meaningful pipeline of US opportunities to convert. You will be shaping Rowden’s brand identity in the US, acting as the trusted person on the ground for customers, partners, and Rowden HQ.

What will make this difficult

This remit is broad, and you won’t have a playbook. In the same day, you might be chasing down a new lead, sitting across the table in a commercial negotiation with a partner, dialing into a product roadmap meeting, and writing the content for a major bid. This requires a breadth of skills and ability to task-switch quickly without dropping the ball, the judgment to show up in the right way for customers and partners, and a deep technical handle on the product at all times. There will be some exhilarating highs but there will also be lows – when an opportunity doesn’t go your way, when you aren’t certain where to go next, when you are making high pressure decisions on a deadline – and you will need to power through these lows to get to the next win.
This role is for you if you are:

• Entrepreneurial. You aren’t afraid to take risks, and you are motivated by the idea of taking early-stage products into a new market rather than building on an established revenue base.
• Highly competitive. You are motivated rather than intimidated by a sales target. You chase every opportunity relentlessly, you hate losing, and you aren’t satisfied until a deal is closed. You would hate handing off to someone else to close.
• An owner. You see every problem as yours to solve and every opportunity as yours to go after. You are always looking for ways to add value.
• Open and honest about what you don’t know. You can give an honest, calibrated view on Rowden’s PWin for any given opportunity, flagging quickly when that view changes.
• Autonomous. You create your own structure and set your own priorities, while staying disciplined about looping in UK leadership and pulling on the resources available to you.
• Credible. You show up in the right way with senior military, government, and industry stakeholders, and you enjoy being the face of the company in the room.
• Adaptable. In a scale-up business in a rapidly evolving market, things change quickly; this role is for you if you can lean into these pivots rather than resist them.

This role is not for you if you:

• Find comfort in a 9-5 job with clear lanes and defined boundaries.
• Struggle with fast-paced change and lack of 24/7 clarity.
• Freeze up when you have to make difficult decisions without full information.
• Avoid direct negotiation or find it uncomfortable to push to a close.
• Prefer regular direction over shaping your own priorities.
• Are more comfortable gathering intelligence and shaping strategy than closing the deal.
• Need a fully built-out local team and infrastructure in place before you’re willing to get moving.

Must have

• Demonstrated track record closing sales through non-traditional and rapid acquisition pathways, including OTAs.
• Demonstrated experience running formal or informal capture processes: shaping opportunities pre-RFP, leading competitive positioning and teaming decisions, and managing PWin through the pursuit lifecycle.
• Ability to identify, establish, and leverage relationships with senior officials and program stakeholders to convert user-driven demand into funded programs — understands how operator/user pull becomes a budget line.
• Strong writing skills, with experience writing white papers, RFIs, and proposal responses.
• Must be a U.S. citizen and hold an active U.S. Secret security clearance.
• Ability to travel 40–60% including one week per quarter at Rowden’s Bristol HQ.
• Ability to complete 6-week onboarding at Rowden’s Bristol HQ.

Nice to have

• Experience in communications systems, RF sensing, SIGINT, or electronic warfare.
• Experience working for a foreign-owned company scaling its US presence including FCT and allied innovation funding routes.
• Working knowledge of ITAR and EAR export control regimes.