Head of Commercial

At Avy, you can shape a market that's just taking off.

About Avy

Avy builds autonomous drones that save lives. We develop, operate and sell long-range unmanned aircraft for emergency services, remote monitoring, and intelligent surveillance. Our partners are among the first organisations in the world to integrate drone operations into their daily workflows — and the impact is real: faster emergency response, remotely operated inspections, and critical intelligence for security operations.

We’re an award-winning Amsterdam-based scale-up at the frontier of unmanned aviation. We combine the energy and boldness of a startup with the discipline and safety standards of a professional aviation organisation. We’ve built cutting-edge products that are ready to make impact at scale — and now we need commercial leadership to make that happen.

About the role

We’re looking for a Head of Commercial to lead Avy’s commercial team. This is an important role: it's your responsibility to fully grasp the opportunity that comes with today’s momentum in the industry.

You’ll own the full commercial scope: marketing, sales, and customer success. Together with the CEO, you’ll make strategic calls — pricing, market prioritisation, go-to-market approach, segment focus — and build the discipline and structure to execute on them. You’ll lead a small but motivated team across sales, marketing and customer success (±8 people). You’ll represent the commercial perspective in our alignment meetings where leaders of different departments are at the table to continuously ensure all teams work towards the same shared objectives.

Key responsibilities

• Defining and owning Avy’s commercial strategy: which markets, which segments, which accounts, and at what price.
• Building sales discipline: structured pipeline management, rigorous lead qualification, and a culture of under-promising and over-delivering.
• Leading and coaching the sales team: setting clear expectations, driving accountability, and developing talent.
• Owning key customer relationships and acting as a credible senior point of contact for government, defence, and enterprise clients.
• Expand the Customer Success team and impact, as you understand that today’s customers are the most important driver of future growth.
• Representing the commercial function at company level, translating market signals into strategic and operational decisions, and ensuring the rest of the organisation is aligned to deliver on commercial commitments.
• Navigating complex sales environments: public procurement, tenders, long cycles, multiple stakeholders, and high-compliance markets.

You won’t start from zero, but there is still plenty to build and shape.

If you get excited about creating commercial structure in a high-potential deeptech company, this role is for you.

About you

You’re a commercial leader who has done this before. Not at a massive corporation, but at a scaling tech company where you had to build things. You combine strategic thinking with hands-on execution: you can define a go-to-market strategy in the morning and join a customer call in the afternoon.

You bring discipline without bureaucracy. You know that a scaling sales organisation needs structure: clear qualification criteria, honest pipeline hygiene, reliable forecasting; but you also know that process for its own sake kills momentum. You find the right balance.

You’re comfortable operating in markets where sales cycles are long, stakeholders are many, and trust is everything. You understand how government, defence, and large enterprise buyers make decisions, and you know how to navigate procurement processes and tender procedures.

You’re a leader, not just a manager. You set a high bar and hold people to it. You do it with warmth, clarity and genuine investment in people’s growth. You can work with diverse personalities in the team and get the best out of each of them. And you’re mission-driven. The fact that Avy’s technology saves lives and pushes the frontier of aviation isn’t a nice-to-have for you. It matters.

Requirements

For this role, you bring:

• 8+ years of experience in B2B sales and experience in a team management role owning a commercial function or sales team.
• A track record of building commercial discipline in a scaling company (roughly 20–150 people). You’ve moved a sales function from ad-hoc to structured.
• Deep experience with long sales cycles, complex B2B deals and multi-stakeholder environments.
• Proven ability to sell into government, defence, public safety or large industrial organisations. Preferably in a highly regulated sector where compliance and certification shape the sales process. Experience with public procurement and tendering processes is a strong plus.
• International sales experience. You’re comfortable operating across countries and cultures.
• Strategic and analytical capability: you can define pricing, segmentation, and go-to-market approaches, not just execute a playbook.
• Creativity and boldness: you can shape deals and partnerships where processes seem stuck or bureaucracy is in the way.
• Fluency in English. Dutch is a big plus but not a hard requirement.

Bonus points if you bring:

• A large network in European defence, government or public safety organisations.
• Experience introducing a new product category or opening new markets where no established buying process exists.

What we offer

• 🚀 Impactful work: Be part of a company using technology to save lives. Our drones support emergency services, monitoring vital infrastructure, nature conservation and security operations across the globe.
• ⭐ An opportunity to grow: As the organisation grows, so does the role.
• 💡 The build opportunity: You’re not maintaining someone else’s machine. You’re creating it. Full ownership of commercial strategy and execution.
• 🌴 Unlimited time off: Take the time you need to recharge and stay at your best, with respect for your team and shared priorities.
• 🏢 An inspiring office: Work from our awesome space in Amsterdam, featuring a rooftop terrace, bar, sauna and great lunches by our company chef!
• 🎢 Startup experience: Embrace the excitement, freedom and fast growth of an ambitious tech scale-up.
• 🤝 A great culture: A warm and fun atmosphere with regular get-togethers, drinks and celebrations plus a work environment built on trust, freedom and learning from mistakes.

EU citizenship or an EU work permit is required for this position (Avy does not offer relocation support).