Director of Account Management, European Auto

Who You Are

As the lead of Account Management for European Auto customers, you report to the VP of Battery Engineering and Commercialization. You're an empathetic leader with the skills to drive a cross-functional team to successfully sell Sila’s material to European auto OEMs. Your work will include understanding customer requirements and helping drive technical direction to support these customers leading to signed sales contracts. Once the sale is made, you will assure the continued expansion and support of these accounts.

Responsibilities & Duties

• Identify and capture sales at new accounts and expand sales into existing accounts leveraging the plans you’ve developed
• Working in collaboration with product management, understand customer product roadmaps, product requirements and tradeoffs customers are willing to make. 
• Work closely with the Commercial Program team to develop project plans and timelines with concrete steps and goals to support your customer. Be the champion of that schedule to support the team’s ability to meet the obligations of that schedule. Manage customer expectations when reality requires the schedule to change.
• Build tight relations with customers, enabling Sila’s respective teams to know and communicate directly with the customers’ quality, production, supply chain, engineering, product, and finance teams. Understand the org chart and function of each contact, especially the decision makers.
• Manage customer expectations, timelines, and needs
• Share information learned about competitors, industry trends, and other customers.
• Own the main communication channel with the customer. Organize face-to-face and virtual meetings with each customer and prepare attendees and presentations to ensure a productive exchange of ideas
• Make tactical customer program level decisions in discussion with other internal teams
• Coach Sila members on how to interact with the customer

Knowledge & Skills

• Successfully closed multiple B2B products contracts from customer intro to contract signing to fulfillment
• 10+ years as an account management leader, including external work with customers
• Strong network within at least one European OEM.
• Deep understanding of how the auto supply chain business operates
• Technical competence that enables understanding of Sila’s materials & applications
• Understanding of batteries would be a big plus, but not required.  
• Comfortable generating, interpreting, and presenting data and reports both internally and externally that are informative and build trust.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with a wide array of personalities and stakeholders, driving alignment, prioritization, and progress in rapidly changing situations
• Fluency in German and English

Physical Demands & Work Conditions

• Extensive travel within Europe and periodically between Europe and Sila HQ

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