Business Development Director

This is a Full Time Job

About the Role

This is a senior business development and commercial leadership role, based in or within easy reach of Los Angeles.

You will own the commercial system that helps Storm create, capture and convert opportunities: opening new relationships, accessing new rooms inside large entertainment clients, activating our existing network, qualifying carefully, coordinating senior Storm leaders into the right conversations, shaping pitches and proposals, and keeping the whole pipeline visible, disciplined and moving. A small AI-first marketing team will report to you, producing the research, content, proof and materials the commercial system needs — they exist to keep you selling.

If you are looking for a role where the brief is already neat, the proposition is static and the sales process is already mature, this is not it. This role is for someone who can help build the commercial operating system while also doing the senior relationship work.

What You'll Make Happen

• Build and lead Storm's commercial growth system for the US entertainment market, with a strong focus on Los Angeles-based studios, streamers, networks, platforms, franchises and entertainment brands
• Create a clear named-account strategy across priority client ecosystems, prospects, former clients, warm-path relationships, partners, intermediaries and referral sources
• Open new rooms inside large existing client organisations by mapping stakeholders, departments, title groups, franchises, budget owners and sponsor paths
• Take Storm's AI transformation offer to market: qualify where there is practical operational pain, sell the bounded diagnostic entry engagement, and grow programmes from the evidence it produces
• Turn Storm's existing senior relationships into a deliberate commercial rhythm, with clear next steps, follow-up, account maps and opportunity ownership
• Qualify opportunities with strong judgement, including strategic fit, budget, urgency, senior sponsorship, delivery feasibility, margin and cultural fit
• Lead or coordinate early-stage diagnostic conversations that uncover client problems, commercial context, operational pain points and possible routes into paid work
• Own the CRM and pipeline discipline for commercial growth, making sure opportunities, contacts, rooms, next steps, forecasts and risks are visible and current
• Lead and direct our AI-first marketing team: set their commercial priorities, direct their research, content, proof and collateral output, and hold the quality bar
• Manage the pitch and proposal flow, including RFPs, credentials conversations, proposal narratives, pitch timelines, internal contributors, follow-ups and post-pitch learning
• Work with Storm's senior leadership and specialists to shape compelling proposals, workshops, diagnostics, retainers, pilots and larger transformation programmes
• Represent Storm externally as a credible commercial ambassador in LA, including industry events, private meetings, client networking, partner conversations and selective roundtables
• Build relationships with relevant agency search consultants, procurement contacts, platform partners, AI and martech partners, and other routes into entertainment clients
• Bring market intelligence back into Storm: what clients are asking for, what clients are changing around AI, where budgets are moving, where buyers are cautious, and where our proposition needs sharper proof
• Protect Storm from poor-fit opportunities, unfocused pitches, underpriced work and sales activity that creates delivery risk
• Over time, recommend what additional commercial, marketing, partnerships or sales-ops support should be hired around the role

Your expertise

You are likely to have:

• Significant business development, growth or commercial experience in an agency, entertainment, media or adjacent environment
• Existing relationships or credible access within the Los Angeles entertainment, media, marketing or agency ecosystem
• Experience leading or contributing to pitches, proposals, RFPs, credentials meetings, SOWs and commercial negotiations
• Evidence that you can understand bespoke services like ours — strategy, social, content, creative production and AI transformation — and a genuine appetite to engage with them deeply
• AI already in your day-to-day work, and real curiosity about what it can do for a role like this — you don't need to be an expert, but you need to want to learn

Who You Are

• Relentlessly high-agency: you're driven, you see possibility where others see blockers, and you turn uncertainty into momentum
• Commercially sharp: you instinctively weigh value, fit and margin, and you care about revenue that's actually worth winning
• Perceptive: you read people, rooms and politics quickly, and sense what really matters
• Seller-first: selling is the mission — everything else you build exists to serve it
• Technically minded: you're joining an AI-forward company with technical DNA, and you're at home in that world
• A charismatic and rigorous communicator: you bring presence and warmth to senior rooms, and clarity and thoroughness to everything you share with your own team