Principal, Business Development (UAE)

About the company

L3Harris builds technology for mission-critical defense and security needs, connecting capabilities across space, air, land, sea, and cyber domains. The organization emphasizes strong values, community commitment, professional growth, inclusion, and a work environment that supports employee success.

Role overview

The company is looking for a senior business development specialist to support its Spectrum Superiority sector in Abu Dhabi. This role will focus on developing and pursuing tactical and strategic ISR and Link 16 opportunities across the Middle East, Central Asia, India, and Africa. The position will also contribute to Broadband Communication Systems, including Common Datalink and Tactical Datalink, with particular attention to Border & Maritime Security, C4ISR, and CJADC2.

Essential responsibilities

• Create, plan, and carry out campaign strategies that help build a favorable environment for winning opportunities in the assigned regions.
• Help ensure regional efforts contribute to the sector’s order commitments.
• Track market developments continuously, including customer requirements, funding patterns, market size, and competitor activity, and use this intelligence to shape business plans.
• Set short- and long-term objectives aligned with the wider organization and recommend goals and actions to leadership as needed.
• Partner closely with regional sales colleagues to identify, develop, and capture both immediate and longer-range growth opportunities.
• Lead capture efforts for important pursuits.
• Support go-to-market planning, including selection or renewal of local consultants, dealers, representatives, and teaming arrangements.
• Guide the regional sales team on the capture management process, from customer meetings to pursuit tracking and gate reviews.
• Serve as the link between the sector businesses and regional sales teams for business development activities such as trade shows, demos, trials, industry days, and customer visits.
• Represent the sector as a subject matter expert when presenting solutions to customers in meetings and events.
• Share market and customer feedback with product management to help identify future product improvements.
• Work with the business and regional sales teams to design localization strategies for the region.
• Analyze product preferences, market potential, sales coverage, penetration, and trends, then prepare forecasts and recommendations.
• Keep relevant stakeholders updated on progress toward business development goals and targets.
• Build and maintain international business relationships that are critical to success.
• Travel frequently across the assigned regions to support meetings, demonstrations, trade shows, and similar activities.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in one or more technical areas, with recognition as a specialist or resource by peers inside and outside the organization.
• Bachelor’s degree with at least 12 years of relevant experience, or a graduate degree with at least 10 years of related experience.
• If no degree is held, at least 16 years of relevant experience is required.
• Strong knowledge of international defense and security technical requirements and acquisition processes.
• Good understanding of maritime requirements, including manned and unmanned platforms.
• Professional fluency in English is required; Arabic fluency is strongly preferred.
• Working knowledge of current military hardware, open architecture software initiatives, and tactical mission technology trends.

Preferred strengths

• Ability to deepen customer relationships and build strong customer intimacy.
• Comfort working with both technical and executive stakeholders.
• Strong skill in explaining system concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Excellent presentation ability and the capacity to build effective working relationships across sales, engineering, program management, customers, and internal teams.
• Strong communication, negotiation, collaboration, and cross-functional leadership skills.

Work schedule

The job location is Abu Dhabi, UAE. The schedule is listed as 5/8-SUN. Frequent international travel is expected.

Additional information

This is a principal-level business development role focused on defense technology markets and international growth. The role involves close coordination across sales, product management, engineering, and program teams.