VP Sales – UK Defence & Public Safety

Application Deadline: 12 September 2025

Department: Revenue Operations

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Bristol, UK

Description

Rowden is building the next UK-headquartered engineering powerhouse.

We design and integrate advanced systems that sense, connect, and protect data in environments where fast, informed decision-making is vital. Our mission is to deliver mission advantage to those working to safeguard national security, public safety, and critical infrastructure.

We’re looking for an inspiring and dynamic VP Sales to lead, mentor, and scale a high-performing sales team. This is a senior role with dual focus: leading from the front on major government sales and empowering others to win.

You’ll be an active participant in closing strategic, enterprise-level opportunities while building a strong team culture, providing structured coaching, and helping the team navigate complexity with confidence and creativity. This is an ideal role for someone who can balance the competing demands of steering GTM strategy and getting hands-on with complex deals.

Key areas of responsibility

Leadership & Team Growth

Lead a growing sales team across defence, national security, emergency services, and critical infrastructure markets.
Serve as a coach and mentor: embedding structured opportunity reviews, encouraging creative thinking, and helping team members overcome technical, commercial, or political blockers.
Role model the behaviours and habits of a high-performing sales organisation – energising the team, reinforcing customer-centricity, and fostering accountability and ownership.
Collaborate with the CEO, CRO, VP Product, and Delivery General Managers to ensure that GTM strategy aligns with capability roadmaps and operational realities.

Sales Strategy & Execution

Shape and refine our go-to-market strategies, translating company objectives into sales targets, routes to market, and territory/account plans.
Personally lead enterprise-scale sales opportunities (typically £10M+) from origination to closure, ensuring momentum across qualification, capture, bid, negotiation, and contracting.
Support development of capture strategies across key verticals: Defence, National Security, Emergency Services, and Critical infrastructure.

Partnership Strategy & Management

Develop and own Rowden’s industry partnership strategy, ensuring alignment with commercial objectives and market opportunities.
Build and manage strategic relationships with industry partners (e.g. system integrators, OEMs, software vendors) to strengthen our commercial network and unlock joint opportunities.

Reporting & Sales Operations

Work closely with revenue operations and executive leadership to ensure robust sales discipline and accountability.

Key skills, experience and behaviours

Experience & Capabilities

Strong track record of closing complex, multi-year enterprise sales (ideally £1M–£10M+ deals) within the public sector.
Demonstrated success in leading high-performing sales teams, including coaching sales people across diverse markets.
Deep knowledge of UK public sector procurement frameworks (e.g. DSPCR, CCS) and routes to market.
Proven ability to guide opportunity strategy - incorporating capture planning, stakeholder mapping, bid development, and win themes.
Experience engaging both technical and non-technical stakeholders, with the ability to bridge between technical specialists and senior stakeholders.

Mindset & Behaviours

Mission-focused: You care deeply about the end-user and the impact of your work on public safety and national security.
Creative and tenacious: You bring original thinking to how we win business and aren't deterred by complex or ambiguous routes to market.
Technically fluent: While not an engineer, you're able to grasp technical concepts and translate them into compelling customer narratives.
Hands-on leader: You get stuck in with proposals, negotiations, and strategic discussions, and lead from the front.
Trusted advisor: You can build trust and influence at C-level across customers and partners.

Additional Details

Location: UK-based, with hybrid working. Regular travel to Bristol required.
Clearance: SC clearance required (or ability to obtain); DV desirable.
Compensation: Competitive base salary with performance-linked OTE.

Working at Rowden

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are! We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants. Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible. Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!