Deal Desk Manager

Advanced Navigation is the world’s most determined innovator in AI robotics and navigation technologies across land, air, sea and space applications. Founded on a culture of research and discovery, Advanced Navigation's mission is to be the catalyst of the autonomy revolution. Fields of expertise include artificial intelligence, underwater sonar, GNSS, radio frequency systems, inertial sensors, robotics, quantum sensors and photonics. 

Today, Advanced Navigation is a supplier to some of the world's largest companies, including Airbus, Boeing, Google, Tesla, NASA, Apple, and General Motors. Discover it for yourself: https://youtu.be/F7uAqs1gtuk

About the role

The Deal Desk exists to make complex commercial deals move quickly without moving outside the guardrails. As Deal Desk Manager, you will be the central point of coordination for non-standard, high-value and strategically significant opportunities — structuring them, pricing them, routing them for approval and getting them to signature and clean order entry.

This is a hands-on role with broad cross-functional reach. You will partner daily with regional sales leadership, finance, legal, supply chain and product to shape deals that are commercially attractive, operationally deliverable and compliant with export-control and revenue-recognition obligations. You will own the quote-to-cash process end to end and the systems, policies and approval frameworks that govern it.

The role sits within the Go to Market organisation, alongside marketing, forward deployed engineering and channel sales, and works in close partnership with the regional sales organisations across APAC, the Americas and EMEA.

What you'll do

• Deal structuring and pricing: 
• • Act as the trusted commercial advisor to sales on non-standard, complex and strategic opportunities, from early shaping through to signature
  • Model deal economics:  margin, discount, payment terms, volume commitments, multi-year and framework structures and recommend the structure that best balances customer value against company return
  • Build and review quotes, proposals and pricing scenarios, including hardware, engineering services, extended warranty and support attach
  • Advise on trade-offs where a requested structure conflicts with pricing policy, delivery capacity or revenue-recognition treatment, and propose viable alternatives
  • Support bid and tender responses with commercial modelling and pricing rationale

• Improve Quote-to-cash process and systems for bespoke and enterprise deals: 
• • Drive measurable reduction in quote turnaround and deal cycle time for bespoke and enterprise deals
  • Continuously improve CRM configuration — product catalogue, price books, discount rules, quote templates and approval workflows
  • Ensure clean, accurate order handoff to finance, supply chain and fulfilment, minimising rework and order errors
  • Identify and remove friction in the sales-to-order path through process redesign and automation

• Governance, approvals and compliance: 
• • Own the discount and approval matrix; route deals to the correct approvers and hold the line on commercial policy
  • Maintain the deal approval audit trail so every exception is documented, justified and reviewable
  • Partner with finance on revenue-recognition treatment of non-standard structures, and with legal on contract terms, T&Cs and deviations from standard paper
  • Work with trade compliance to ensure deals reflect export-control, end-use and citizenship requirements before commitments are made to customers

• Commercial policy and enablement: 
• • Draft, maintain and communicate pricing policy, discount guidance, deal playbooks and standard commercial terms
  • Train and enable the regional sales teams on deal desk process, CPQ usage and what good deal structure looks like
  • Run periodic pricing reviews with finance and product, feeding field evidence into list price and packaging decisions
  • Build a consistent global standard so a customer receives the same commercial experience in any region

• Reporting and forecasting partnership: 
• • Instrument deal desk activity so its contribution is visible: cycle time, approval volumes, exception rates and discount performance
  • Provide pricing, margin and win/loss analysis to commercial leadership to inform strategy
  • Support the forecasting cadence with pipeline hygiene, deal-stage discipline and close-plan review on major pursuits
  • Report on leakage and policy adherence, and drive corrective action where trends emerge

Qualifications & Skills

• Degree in business, commerce, finance, economics or a related discipline (or equivalent depth demonstrated in the field)
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent time management, driven to work quickly and accurately under deadline pressure
• Strong attention to detail and comfort with ambiguity
• Effective presentation crafting and delivery skills

Experience:

• 5+ years in deal desk, revenue operations, sales operations, commercial finance or pricing, ideally in a hardware, deep-tech or enterprise technology environment
• Demonstrated record of structuring and closing complex, high-value, non-standard commercial deals
• Strong commercial and financial acumen: pricing, margin analysis, deal modelling and an understanding of revenue-recognition principles
• Hands-on fluency with CRM (Salesforce, and MSFT Dynamics ideal), including configuration of price books, discount rules and approval workflows
• Advanced spreadsheet modelling, with the ability to build clear scenarios for non-financial audiences
• Working familiarity with contracting fundamentals and standard commercial terms
• Proven ability to influence senior sales, finance and legal stakeholders without direct authority, and to hold a position under quarter-end pressure

Nice to have:

• Experience selling into defence, aerospace or government programs, including tenders and programs of record
• Familiarity with export controls (ITAR/EAR), end-use restrictions and national caveat requirements as they affect commercial terms
• Experience supporting a multi-region, matrixed commercial organisation
• SQL or BI tooling (Tableau, Power BI, Looker) for commercial reporting