Head of Business Development

About HyLight:

HyLight’s mission is to help society become more resilient to climate change by improving the observation and inspection of infrastructure.

We build HyLighters, airships that collect data across vast distances with zero emissions.

Our activities include:

• Detecting methane leaks from gas infrastructures (4% of global GHG emissions)
• Inspecting power lines to prevent outages and wildfires

By 2030, we aim to become the global leader in aerial monitoring.

In just 3 years, we have pushed the realm of possibilities: as we have:

• Developed 12 iterations of the HyLighter
• Secured our first inspection contracts with Europe’s largest infrastructure operators
• Joined the world’s top startup accelerator, Y Combinator
• Raised €6 millions

HyLight is aiming for a diverse and included team, if your profile doesn't fit all the description but you can bring a diverse point of view, push it forward, it will be highly appreciated.

We’re well-funded and backed by top investors, providing the resources you wish you had when building your own business. We don’t care about traditional roles or titles—just that you’re smart, proactive, and bring the same founder-level ownership and drive to help us build something massive.

Job Summary:
You’ll be part of the business team, working directly with our co-founder and CBO Thomas Laporte, as well as with our co-founder and CEO Martin Bocken and collaborate with the Operation team. You’ll get a 360° responsibility on all the aspects of the business development in your targets (sales, prospection, marketing and communication). You will have a strong impact on the company as it grows and on the business strategy.

The Mission:

• Owning the full B2B enterprise sales cycle end-to-end, from strategic prospecting and executive-level discovery to complex negotiations, contract signature, and long-term account development.
• Leading and closing high-value, complex deals with large industrial and infrastructure clients (utilities, energy operators, transport networks)
• Managing long sales cycles involving multiple stakeholders, regulatory constraints, and structured procurement processes, while maintaining momentum, prioritization, and clear decision paths.
• Structuring commercial strategies and pricing models adapted to enterprise clients, multi-year contracts, and large-scale inspection programs.
• Acting as the senior commercial interface with C-level and executive stakeholders on the client side, building trust-based, long-term partnerships.
• Coordinating closely with internal teams after signature, ensuring smooth mission preparation, execution, and delivery, and taking ownership of escalations and issue resolution when needed.
• Building, structuring, and scaling the sales organization, including defining processes, tools, KPIs, and eventually hiring and managing a senior B2B sales team.
• Contributing directly to company strategy, market prioritization, and international expansion decisions.

Personal Note from Thomas (CBO):

Saying that HyLight is fast paced is an understatement. Our team keeps on building to increase the quality of the data by adding better and more sensors, the quantity of the data by flying ever longer. It’s our goal (yours and mine) to keep feeding our team with inspections in order to enhance the solution, learn, bring value and repeat.
Know that there are dozens of applications possible. Your responsibility will be to understand them, quantify them, prioritize them and deliver quickly so that HyLight keeps learning and keeps growing faster. It is a unique opportunity to be fully committed and to have real impact.

Profile Sought:

Experience:

• 15+ years of experience in B2B enterprise sales, business development, or sales leadership roles.
• Proven track record in complex sales environments with long sales cycles and multiple decision-makers.
• Strong experience selling high-value B2B services or solutions with average deal sizes between €1M and €5M.
• Solid background working with large industrial, infrastructure, or regulated clients.
• Experience building, structuring, and leading sales teams in scale-up or fast-growing environments.
• Strong strategic mindset combined with a hands-on ability to personally drive and close deals.

The following list of skills is exhaustive, while you may not perfectly fit with the profile, we highly value personal growth and development. You are a potential future team leader at HyLight.

Technical Skills:

This is an exhaustive list of sought after skills, if you have

• Daily usage of organization softwares (Slack, Notion etc).
• Daily usage of sales software (Attio, Hubspot etc).
• Building and enhancing tender tools/templates to answer better and quicker.
• Generating sales playbooks.
• Recruiting sales team members.
• Experience in using softwares, tools, no-code and playing with them.

Soft Skills:

• Hands-on, owner and strong communication skills.
• Fast learner.
• Strong rigor, routine builder and follower.
• Languages: English (fluent) ; German / Spanish / Italian (is a plus) ; French (is a plus but not necessary).

Bonus Qualities:

• Strong analytical and synthesizing mindset.
• Proactive in proposing alternative ways to reach goals.
• Risk taker.
• Capable of estimating and communicating progress or setbacks, meeting development timelines while anticipating challenges.
• Prior personal or academic projects in startup launching.

What We Offer:

• Package salary (base + performance variable) of 150k€
• Become a shareholder in HyLight.
• 100% reimbursement of public transport pass (Navigo) or €800/year for sustainable commuting.
• Bike provided for commuting.
• Free lunch.
• Bi-annual offsite trips with the whole team.
• Excellent work environment: international, ambitious and highly-motivated team, team events, beautiful offices on a former airbase.

Why You Should Join:

• Founder Mentality: We value extreme ownership and want people who think like entrepreneurs—fast decision makers, natural problem solvers, and executers.
• Ground Floor Opportunity: You’ll be helping to shape and grow a revolutionary company with the resources to back it.
• Impact & Speed: Work in a fast-paced environment where your contributions will have immediate, tangible effects on the company’s success.

Location:

• Office : Base 217, Brétigny-sur-Orge, accessible via RER C.
• Lab and Warehouse access

• Introductory phone call (20 min)
• Video interview with our CBO Thomas (40 min)
• A 1 hour technical case study followed by a debrief with team members
• Reference calls
• On-site meeting with the team