Business Development Manager - Automotive Polymers

The Business Development Manager owns GEON’s Market strategic roadmap and drives profitable growth by identifying, validating, and commercializing new products, applications, markets, and strategic partnerships.

The role connects market intelligence, customer insights, innovation, commercialization, and sales, building a balanced pipeline of near- and long-term opportunities that expand GEON’s Total Addressable Market (TAM) and generate recurring revenue.

Primary Responsibilities

Market & Opportunity Development

· Identify emerging markets, applications, customer needs, technologies, and competitive opportunities.

· Develop and communicate market intelligence, Voice of Customer (VOC), and growth recommendations.

· Identify opportunities to expand GEON’s TAM through new markets, applications, products, business models, partnerships, and M&A.

· Build relationships with OEM’s, their tiers, suppliers, startups, research institutions, and other strategic partners that can accelerate market access, technical validation, and commercialization.

· Identify and develop new application platforms that leverage GEON’s existing technologies - proliferate existing solutions into new applications and segments

· Develop and maintain strategic market playbooks for assigned segments including TAM, customer prioritization, competitive positioning, technology trends, and growth initiatives.

Innovation & Portfolio Management

· Own and refine the market and innovation roadmap.

· Lead cross-functional teams across R&D, Product Management, Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Supply Chain.

· Prioritize opportunities based on market attractiveness, technical feasibility, differentiation, investment, and financial potential.

· Maintain a balanced portfolio of near-, mid-, and long-term growth opportunities.

· Advance qualified projects through GEON’s stage-gate process.

Go-to-Market & Commercialization

· Develop business cases, value propositions, pricing strategies, and go-to-market plans for priority opportunities.

· Convert Type 3 and Type 4 innovation projects into recurring sales.

· Partner with Marketing to position GEON solutions and identify additional applications and customers.

· Ensure Operations and Supply Chain readiness for successful commercialization.

· Track customer adoption and use feedback to improve market and product strategies.

Sales Enablement & Growth

· Partner with Sales and Distribution to deliver AOP volume and margin objectives.

· Participate in joint customer and prospect engagements.

· Build qualified commercial opportunities and maintain an actionable CRM pipeline.

· Support customer negotiations and strategic partnerships.

· Champion GEON’s innovation, selling, and commercialization processes.

· Drive conversion of opportunities into profitable, sustainable revenue growth.

Minimum Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in engineering, science, business, or related field preferred; equivalent experience considered.

· Proven experience in business development, technical sales, product management, innovation, strategic marketing, or related disciplines.

· Strong understanding of polymer science, compounding technologies, material performance, processing methods, and end-use applications, with the ability to translate technical capabilities into customer value and commercially viable opportunities.

· Demonstrated success developing new markets, applications, products, or revenue streams.

· Commercial track record - Demonstrated success building and converting a qualified opportunity pipeline into profitable, recurring revenue, with clear accountability for pricing, margin, forecast accuracy, and business-case assumptions.

· Program and project management - Proven ability to manage multi-year OEM qualification and launch programs across engineering, purchasing, and program-management stakeholders, holding timelines through long development cycles

· Material specification and approval expertise - Demonstrated experience securing material approvals at OEM and Tier 1 accounts, including working knowledge of OEM material specifications, PPAP/production part approval, and validation testing requirements.

· Mobility market experience - demonstrated experience with commercial/business development roles serving automotive OEMs (required) with additional exposure to at least one adjacent mobility segment (preferred).