Business Development and Grant Manager, Lodestar
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Space research technology
Job no longer available
Space research technology
1-20 employees
Job no longer available
+ Equity pool options
More information about location
1-20 employees
Company mission
To deliver orbital defence as a service to high-value US and allied assets.
Role
Who you are
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience within a related field
- Excellent writing and technical communications skills
- Ability to champion our company to forge key external relationships
- Proactivity in finding new business growth opportunities
- Proven experience of winning non-dilutive funding or commercial contracts
Desirable
- Strong existing network with the aerospace and defence industry
- Familiarity with government and commercial acquisition processes
- Understanding of relevant space legal, regulatory, and compliance hurdles
- Familiar with building, running and executing a strong CRM and sales pipeline
What the job involves
- We're seeking a talented Business Development Manager to be a proactive champion of our mission, technology, and capability
- You will expand the funnel of opportunities coming our way, and select specific non-dilutive funding awards and programs to invest the team into
- You will use your existing network and understanding of international aerospace and defence stakeholders, to build consortiums where relevant, for the strategic interests of Lodestar and our missions
- You will take a lead of putting these bids together, mapping out and initiating support needed from the team
- You will build close relationships with both government and commercial customers, always testing our working hypotheses, feeding back unique insights to the team, and shaping our value proposition to stand out
- You will work to develop our reputation within industry, and find new ways for the team to build its brand
- Bid Writing: Find, select, and build winning bids for both grants and contracts
- Commercial Development: Maintain a CRM and keep high frequency contact with industry and governments to test our technology against
- Industry Collaboration: Utilise your network and contacts to partner Lodestar with strategic companies to reach our goals
- Risk Management: Identify, assess, and mitigate risks related to business and commercial pitfalls we're likely to face
- Continuous Improvement: Continuously feedback ways to improve our value proposition, ways of working, and where we're losing ground
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Satellites are critical for services ranging from GPS to disaster coordination. But they face significant vulnerabilities due to their inaccessibility, making them susceptible to technical issues and attacks. Addressing these concerns is essential for maintaining space infrastructure and national security.
Lodestar aims to revolutionise satellite maintenance and security with a "first responder" service in space, utilising advanced robotic sentries. Unlike competitors building entire spacecraft, Lodestar focuses on a platform-agnostic robotic system. Its initial product, a dexterous robotic arm, is designed to inspect and repair assets in orbit, offering scalable solutions for commercial and defence customers.
The company has continued to advance it s autonomous in-orbit capabilities, including Mithril, a sensing system using LiDAR, machine vision, adn AI to detec and respond to nearby spacecraft, with flight demonstrations planned for 2026. The company has also partnered with Momentus to integrate its robotic arm on partner spacecraft, expanding applications across commercial and defense missions. These developments reinforce Lodestar's role in delivering scalable, autonomous solutions for satellite inspection, maintenance, and security.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Dec 2025
$0.1m
GRANT
Jul 2024
$2.5m
SEED
Total funding: $2.6m
Company HQ
SoMa, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Neil Buchanan
(Co-Founder)Graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. Previously founded endeavour where they served as Team Lead for 2 years. They also worked as a Business Development Specialist at Flowcopter.
Thomas Santini
(Co-Founder)Previously Co-founded Dekked. They also worked as a Product Manager at Backslash Build and Nutribloc, and as an RDD New Product Design Engineer at Dyson.
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