Position Overview
We are seeking a hands-on Business Development Manager to drive new client acquisition and revenue growth for IT Staff Augmentation across the US, UK, and Europe. The role manages the end-to-end sales cycle, from prospecting and client acquisition to negotiation, closure, and resource deployment, while representing Focaloid's technology capabilities across AI, Data, Cloud, DevOps, Cybersecurity, and related areas.
This is a target-carrying role to begin with. As the business grows, the role will have opportunities to build and lead a Business Development team.
The position is based in Kochi and works in person, with evening overlaps for Europe and US coverage.
Key Responsibilities
- Identify, prospect, and acquire new end clients across the US, UK, and Europe.
- Build and maintain a strong pipeline of qualified staffing and staff augmentation opportunities.
- Conduct outbound business development through LinkedIn, email, cold calling, referrals, networking, and other channels.
- Research target organizations, identify decision-makers, and initiate meaningful conversations.
- Build relationships with CIOs, CTOs, VP Engineering, Engineering Directors, Heads of Technology, Data/AI leaders, Procurement, and Resource Planning stakeholders.
- Develop long-term client relationships rather than focusing only on individual requirements.
- Generate new business through self-generated prospecting as well as qualified leads, and conduct discovery meetings to understand client business, technology, workforce, and budget requirements.
- Present Focaloid's value proposition around technology talent, engineering capabilities, and staff augmentation services.
- Drive opportunities through vendor registration, NDA, MSA, SOW/Work Order, commercial negotiation, and deployment.
- Personally manage client conversations and negotiations through closure.
- Drive staff augmentation sales for technology professionals and engineering teams across AI/ML, Generative AI, Data Engineering, Data Science, Cloud, DevOps, Cybersecurity, Full Stack, Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Data Platforms, and emerging technologies.
- Understand technology requirements at a commercial level and communicate confidently with technical and business stakeholders.
- Qualify every requirement — the business need behind it, whether it is genuine, funded, actionable, and commercially viable.
- Qualify number of resources, technology/skills, experience level, engagement duration, start date, location/time zone, work model, budget, billing expectations, interview process, decision-makers, and procurement process.
- Identify opportunity urgency and probability of closure, and differentiate genuine hiring requirements from market benchmarking or non-actionable requirements.
- Ensure Recruitment/Delivery teams receive complete and accurate requirements.
- Negotiate client billing rates and commercial terms within approved pricing and margin guidelines.
- Understand resource cost, billing rate, gross margin, margin percentage, and overall deal profitability, and protect agreed margins while remaining commercially competitive.
- Handle rate negotiations and commercial objections effectively, and seek internal approvals for exceptions where required.
- Own the opportunity end to end — maintain momentum through the sales cycle, coordinate closely with Recruitment and Delivery, and ensure client expectations, timelines, commercials, and requirements are clearly communicated.
- Follow up consistently, drive opportunities toward closure, and support the client and internal teams until successful deployment.
- Grow accounts by developing relationships with multiple stakeholders, identifying future staffing and technology requirements, and expanding through additional resource deployments.
- Identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, increase client wallet share, and convert initial placements into larger engagements and engineering teams.
- Collaborate with Recruitment and Delivery — provide well-qualified requirements, communicate technical requirements, timelines, interview processes, and commercial parameters, and coordinate candidate submissions and client interviews.
- Track feedback, ensure timely movement of candidates and opportunities, and provide market feedback on demand, skill availability, pricing, and client expectations.
- Maintain an accurate and healthy sales pipeline, managing prospects and opportunities through defined CRM stages.
- Track prospecting activities, meetings, opportunities, proposals, negotiations, and closures; maintain accurate forecasts and monitor conversion ratios and sales-cycle timelines.
- Track expected revenue and deployment pipeline, and conduct regular pipeline reviews and win/loss analysis.
- Track market intelligence — international IT staffing and technology hiring trends, high-demand skills, emerging staffing opportunities, competitor positioning, and market rates.
- Research target industries and organizations with recurring technology resource requirements, and provide leadership with insights into pricing, demand, client expectations, and growth opportunities.
Required Skills
- 8–15 years of relevant experience in Business Development, IT Staffing, Staff Augmentation, Technology Services Sales, or a related field.
- Proven experience in International IT Staffing / Staff Augmentation sales.
- Hands-on experience selling to US, UK, or European clients.
- Demonstrated experience in direct client acquisition and new business development.
- Proven ability to personally manage client conversations and close staffing deals.
- Experience carrying and achieving an individual sales/revenue target.
- Strong understanding of IT staffing and staff augmentation business models.
- Experience negotiating billing rates and commercial terms.
- Good understanding of gross margin, pricing, and profitability.
- Experience managing opportunities from prospecting through deployment.
- Ability to communicate confidently with technical and business stakeholders.
- Good commercial understanding of AI/ML, Data, Cloud, DevOps, Cybersecurity, or Software Engineering.
- Strong communication, negotiation, presentation, and relationship-building skills.
Good to Have
- An existing network of technology decision-makers in the US, UK, or Europe.
- Experience selling engineering resources or offshore technology talent.
- Experience working with IT services, digital engineering, or technology consulting companies.
- Experience selling AI, Data, Cloud, DevOps, Cybersecurity, or Software Engineering resources.
- Experience with MSA, SOW, Work Orders, NDA, vendor onboarding, and procurement processes.
- Experience growing an account from individual placements to multi-resource engagements.
- Experience selling to enterprise clients.
- Exposure to Automotive, BFSI/FinTech, Healthcare, Insurance, SaaS, or Technology industries.
Education
Ideal Candidate
We are looking for a hunter with consultative selling capability who can independently identify and target international clients, open doors with decision-makers, generate and qualify genuine staffing opportunities, understand technology and workforce requirements, negotiate commercials, close profitable engagements, and coordinate with Recruitment and Delivery through deployment. The ideal candidate is revenue-driven, commercially aware, self-motivated, and comfortable working independently. Success is measured not by the number of CVs submitted or candidates placed, but by the ability to acquire quality clients, generate profitable revenue, create repeat business, and build scalable staff augmentation accounts.
This role is not suited to candidates whose experience is primarily limited to domestic-only staffing without international client acquisition; MSP/VMS-only submissions without direct client acquisition and relationship management; permanent placement or recruitment only, without IT staff augmentation sales experience; or recruitment delivery and vendor coordination without ownership of prospecting, client conversations, commercial negotiations, and business closure.