Founding GTM & Sales Manager - DACH & Nordics (gn) @ AI Digital Defense Venture, Germany

This is an Atlantic portfolio venture. About the Venture We build frontier artificial intelligence that helps governments and defence organisations make sense of a fast-moving information environment. Our systems help the teams responsible for national security read a complex information environment faster and clearer than ever before. We've closed a pre-seed round and are already running live government pilots, with plans to expand across Europe and beyond. This is an early, venture-backed company doing work that carries weight. About the Role This is a founding role for our expansion across the DACH region and the Nordics. You will own how we grow here, from the first conversation through to a signed contract, building the region much as we built the UK: learning the landscape, opening doors, landing pilots and turning them into long-term contracts. You will work closely with the founders and with a forward-deployed engineer who builds the tools, integrations and prototypes that a live sales process needs, so your job is to win the room, work out what the customer actually needs, and direct that build until the deal closes. What you'll do • Own go-to-market across the DACH region and the Nordics, winning and growing contracts across government, defence and large enterprise, from first conversation through to close. • Map the region from a blank slate, find the advisory relationships that open doors, and build a network where we do not have one yet. • Land pilots and turn them into long-term contracts, working from first engagements towards enterprise deals worth seven figures a year. • Turn customer needs into scoped solutions, briefing and directing a forward-deployed engineer to stand up the reports, dashboards, integrations and prototypes that move deals forward. • Build the regional playbook from first principles: pipeline, qualification, pricing and close. • Make complex technology clear and convincing to senior decision-makers in government and defence. • Work directly with the founders on strategy, positioning and the deals that matter most. About You You are, at heart, someone who likes to build something from nothing. You are at your best finding the first contacts, earning their trust, and turning a cold market into real relationships and real deals. You are hands-on, as comfortable doing the sourcing and outreach yourself as sitting across from a senior decision-maker on a sensitive brief, and you understand that this kind of work is slow, careful and built on trust. • A real appetite for business development: you like winning deals, opening relationships and building a market from scratch, and you keep going long after an inherited network has run dry. • Enough of a technical background to scope solutions, brief an engineer and hold your own with technical buyers. • The drive to build a process from nothing rather than run one that already exists. • Fluency in the region: strong English and at least one relevant regional language, with German a clear advantage. • Comfort in an early startup, where there is real ownership, quick decisions and plenty of ambiguity. • Discretion and integrity, because our work depends on a high level of trust. • A background in defence, national security or another setting where you have earned trust and done deals with government is a strong advantage. • Eligibility for security clearance is an advantage. Why Join This is a launching role with a whole region to own, at an early, venture-backed company that has already closed a pre-seed round and is running live pilots with government. You will work alongside the founders, with founder-level access and ownership from the start, and the market you build will be yours to shape. The work is demanding and it matters, for