Business Development Manager at Instrument

Instrument is a design and technology company. We build brands, products, and experiences that move businesses forward—by making the complex simple. For over 20 years, we’ve partnered with companies like Google, ServiceNow, Uber, Eventbrite, and ŌURA, helping them navigate change, launch new ideas, and grow with intention. Our work spans Brand, Marketing, and Product, but what defines us is how we work. We bring strategy, design, and engineering together from the start, moving quickly from idea to execution and refining as we go. We aim to do great work and be great to work with, because both matter. We’re a collaborative, hands-on team with roots in Portland and New York and a distributed presence across the U.S. and Europe. We build teams around the needs of the work, staying nimble without sacrificing craft. We value curiosity, perspective, and continuous learning, and we’re committed to building an inclusive environment where people can do their best work. If that sounds like you, we’d love to meet you. As a Business Development Manager, you are a practitioner, systems builder, and a growth leader. You work inside one of the most enduring client-agency partnerships in the industry, and across one of the world’s most important technology companies.  You take ownership of the pursuit process, managing inbound deal flow, creating the materials and artifacts that bring Instrument’s story to life, and delivering a client experience that turns every new lead into an opportunity for a long-term relationship. You’re comfortable shaping conversations, framing proposals, and driving narratives.    Operating within a single-client ecosystem, where growth means establishing, deepening, and expanding relationships across multiple business units, you’ll develop a deep understanding of how the client operates, what they need, and how to position our core services and capabilities.    You partner with growth leaders to spot opportunities, qualify them, nurture them, and create the conditions for studio teams to act on them. You build the systems that make growth motions repeatable and scaleable, freeing leaders and practitioners to focus on the work.    This role sits within Instrument’s Wizard Studio, requiring a strong understanding of brand, product and marketing, fluency in design and technology, and genuine curiosity about how AI is evolving agency-client partnerships.  What You'll Do • Act as one of the primary faces of Instrument in new business conversations. • Lead discovery and “hello” sessions with prospective clients, uncovering needs and mapping them to Instrument’s capabilities. • Manage core inbound opportunities independently, while supporting senior leadership on marquee pursuits. • Build trust quickly, ensuring client stakeholders see Instrument as a knowledgeable, creative, and strategic partner. • Partner across the end-to-end sales cycle of inbound requests for core project opportunities, from intake and qualification through proposal development to close. • Optimize the pursuit and proposal process, making responses, timelines, and communication progressively more efficient and effective. • Track, analyze, and share pipeline health insights (conversion metrics, deal velocity, source quality, win/loss patterns) with studio leadership. • Maintain CRM hygiene and ensure pipeline data flows accurately into financial reporting. • Ensure proactive follow-ups and touchpoints keep opportunities moving forward. • Optimize and enhance repeatable growth systems: intake rubrics, opportunity score cards, proposal templates, and pursuit playbooks that right-size effort to opportunity. • Create and maintain highly functional knowledge bases, including case study libraries, competitive positioning, engagement model documentation, and reusable pursuit materials. • Help identify and establish a suite of tools to support contact enrichment, signal monitoring, stakeholder and organizational mapping. • Partner with studio leadership and internal technologists/operations teams to identify opportunities to automate processes: brief scoring, response templating, contact intelligence, trigger-based outreach. • Develop a deep understanding of the studio’s historical work, partnerships, and case studies. • Be hands-on in building the artifacts of business development - hello and teaser decks, case studies, tailored narratives, proposals and BU-specific positioning, in partnership with the team. • Translate strategy and creative thinking into client-ready materials that showcase craft, capability, and commercial value. • Develop a perspective on how to position core services and capabilities, refining that perspective continuously to fit the client’s ecosystem. • Demonstrate bias toward action, moving quickly to create materials and context that maintain momentum, at a high standard of quality. • Support studio leadership with net-new BU, product area and contact targeting outside existing relationships. • Amplify and activate ABM strategy across tiered targets, from high-touch to scaled outreach, in partnership with Marcomm. • Partner with Strategic Growth Directors and studio leadership to re-engage and nurture lapsed relationships. • Identify expansion opportunities within existing accounts and collaborate on tailored pursuit strategies. • Develop fluency in engagement models, team design, and productized offerings, supporting their evolution. • Contribute to strategic growth initiatives, including annual studio planning, account assessments, and re-planning moments. • Partner with strategy, design, technology and delivery leads during the pursuit process to ensure realistic, differentiated, and inspiring solutions and proposals. • Ensure studio leaders and individual contributors are managed efficiently in new business processes, with clear briefs, defined time commitments and streamlined involvement. • Work with studio partners to inform how proposals, project approaches, and engagement designs balance ambition with practicality. • Be a connective tissue across disciplines, ensuring each pursuit feels integrated and cohesive. • Connect with central BD, marketing, and BI functions to leverage shared resources and provide studio-specific visibility and intelligence • Model positive growth behaviors from proactive opportunity identification, to rigorous qualification, strategic confidence, and commercial discipline. • Support growth training and enablement, helping coordinate pitch and presentation development for team members involved in client-facing moments • Mentor junior team members involved in pursuit processes • Contribute to a growth culture that feels like a resource that strengthens the team What You'll Bring • 5–8+ years in BD, growth, or account development in an agency or consulting environment • Experience with retained or annuity accounts, intra-account growth or ABM activation • Demonstrated ability to build, scale, and automate growth systems • Track record of leading enterprise-level client conversations and managing pursuit processes end-to-end with operational discipline, optimizing them over time • Strong narrative and positioning instinct, and an ability to frame and articulate services and capabilities for different audiences. • A practitioner’s mindset - curious, hands-on, and proactive in making. You don’t wait for direction, you build momentum. • A sense of urgency toward the opportunities, you move just as fast as our delivery teams. • Ability to balance bold innovation with pragmatic solutions, adapting strategies to maximize success. • Demonstrated ability to foster trust with clients and teams, building inclusive, collaborative environments. • A passion for creativity and a drive to positively contribute to Instrument’s growth and reputation. • A resilient, positive energy that motivates the team and instills confidence with clients. • Comfort with overcommunication and alignment, ensuring no one is left behind in the process. • Experience with a major technology client - procurement structures, vendor management, BU dynamics • Experience working with across product, brand or marketing-led teams, with an ability to understand workflows, team structures, and how to effectively position and pitch design and technology services. • Fluency in CRM and pipeline management (HubSpot preferred) Pay Range • The expected pay range for this position is $85,000-$125,000 for our base US Region 3*. We have three regional pay ranges that are adjusted for cost of living (US1 +15%, US2 +7.5%, US3 Base), *learn more about our pay philosophy and cost of living adjustments. What We Offer Flexible, Hybrid Work Environment Great Compensation with Annual Reviews (Learn more about our Pay Philosophy) 401(k) Matching with Immediate Vesting Robust Medical, Vision, and Accident Insurance Generous Paid Holidays and unlimited PTO Sabbaticals Monthly Wellbeing Stipend Career Management and Leadership Training