Head of Business Development

Hi, my name is Egwin. I’m the founding CEO of Panenco and I’m currently hiring a Head of Business Development to build out our commercial operations in a structural way. Initially, ChatGPT drafted this vacancy, but I decided to give it a more personal spin. 

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Job title: Head of Business Development

Company: Panenco

Website: www.panenco.com

Location: hybrid work policy (office in Leuven, Belgium + flexible remote work)

Employment type: full-time

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About Panenco:

For the past 10 years -ever since I graduated university at KU Leuven in Belgium-, my colleagues and I have been pouring our hearts and souls into the buildout of our digital product studio, Panenco. We’re a team of 35 good-natured and entrepreneurial product managers, software engineers and designers, working shoulder-to-shoulder with our clients on product innovations and technical refactoring trajectories. We do the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

Where we are & where we’re headed:

• Diverse client and product portfolio (customer base currently mostly in Belgium)
• High-performing team of 35 people in flat and highly effective org structure
• Deep expertise and proven track record in public cloud, IoT, SaaS & genAI
• Refined delivery model that is aligned with our clients in a spirit of co-creation
• Stable financial and operational basis, incl ISO27001 certification

We have a strong footprint and track record working with Belgian scale-ups, SME and high-tech firms. Our next objective is to bring our service offering into a larger market segment -preferably with an international dimension- while always staying true to our core product development principles and can-do culture.

Our customer base and company as a whole have grown organically over the years. We’ve come to notice that delivering outstanding work is our greatest assurance to securing new opportunities. As we’re getting ready for the next phase of our growth, we’re looking for an experienced professional as our Head of Business Development.

There’s a clear new innovation wave that’s driven by genAI. We have everything in place to assist ambitious teams with their productization trajectories, touching the entire product development stack including UI/UX, full-stack development, cloud architecture, and security. Delivering significant product value in short, iterative cycles.

Your role:

Your main objective will be to identify and secure new business opportunities and partnerships with ambitious clients through consultative selling.

You will be given a great deal of autonomy and an always-open line to myself and our operations manager, Koen Verschooten as well as our product- and engineering managers. In return we expect you to come with fresh ideas, energy and inspiration every day, always representing the firm faithfully and knowledgeably. 

I don’t want to write a list of activities in this vacancy -because I strongly hope you will come with your own set of operating methods- but here are some core principles:

• We don’t ‘sell’; we set up lasting partnerships
• We have a knack for technical complexity
• Steady and frugal wins the race

Your ideal background:

You have a proven track record (5-10 years) in (digital) strategy consulting, tech scale-up or an equivalent role and you’re ready for a new phase in your career where you can get behind the steering wheel. Character traits we’re looking for: entrepreneurial, intellectually curious, genuine and humble.

We offer:

• A prominent seat at the table as part of our leadership team
• Fair compensation with performance-based upside
• Rational remote work policy (offices in Leuven & Antwerp)
• Wide variety of responsibilities and rapid learning curve in new technological domains

Apply:

Do you have a deep understanding of digital product development, a passion for technology, a knack for innovation and a proven track record? I can’t wait to get to start working together and make a dent in our industry!

If you have any further questions about this vacancy or our way of working, please never hesitate to reach out to egwin.avau@panenco.com (no recruiters please).