Senior Director, Business Development – Physical AI, Robotics & Drones (Europe & APAC)

About the role

The Senior Director will own business development for Physical AI, Robotics and Drones across Europe and APAC. Based in a regional hub, the role involves extensive travel (40‑50%) and close collaboration with engineering, sales and product teams to secure multi‑year, multi‑million‑dollar design wins.

Key responsibilities

• Define and execute regional BD strategy and account plans aligned with the global segment share‑gain roadmap.
• Own the largest strategic accounts, including robot and drone OEMs, humanoid and AMR makers, and defense‑adjacent drone manufacturers.
• Negotiate multi‑year, multi‑million‑dollar contracts, custom NRE agreements and strategic‑supply deals.
• Lead design‑win pursuits from executive kickoff through PoC intake, coordinating solution architects and technical resources.
• Build executive relationships with CTOs, VP Engineering and procurement leaders of Tier‑1 OEMs, system integrators and distributors.
• Develop the regional partner ecosystem covering autonomy stacks, flight controllers, sensors (vision, LiDAR, radar), motor control and board modules.
• Provide market intelligence on competitor chips, policies, funding and standards to segment owners and portfolio planning.
• Own pipeline and forecast accuracy, reconciling numbers before leadership reviews.

Required profile

• BS in Electrical/Computer Engineering or related field; MBA preferred.
• 15+ years in semiconductor or embedded‑systems BD, sales or product marketing, with at least 7 years at senior level.
• Proven record of large strategic design wins and major OEM deals in Europe and/or APAC.
• Deep network in robotics, industrial automation or drones in one region and ability to build it quickly in the other.
• Strong technical fluency across motor control, functional safety, sensor fusion, edge AI inference, real‑time compute, ROS 2, flight control and datalinks.
• Working knowledge of export control and dual‑use regulations (EAR/ITAR, EU Dual‑Use).
• Fluent English; additional languages (German, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin) a strong plus.

Required skills

• Motor control and functional safety concepts.
• Sensor fusion, edge AI inference, real‑time computing.
• ROS 2, flight control systems and datalink protocols.
• FPGA architecture and its advantages over SoCs and GPUs.
• Export control compliance (EAR/ITAR, EU Dual‑Use).
• Negotiation of multi‑year, multi‑million‑dollar contracts.