Sales Operations Lead

About Optics11

Optics11 is a fast-growing technology company developing advanced fiber-optic sensing solutions for some of the world’s most demanding environments.

Our solutions protect critical infrastructure such as sea-lanes, offshore energy assets and subsea cables. In Underwater Security, OptiBarrier provides immediate, over-the-horizon threat detection and OptiArray is our low-power optical thin-line towed array for unmanned underwater vehicles and submarines. In Energy, OptiFinder enables early detection of faults in high-voltage infrastructure.

The Role

Job profile

As Sales Operations Lead you will make Optics11’s sales organization predictable and scalable while headcount grows aggressively. You will be part of the Global Sales team, reporting to the SVP Global Sales, and work closely with the Sales Directors, Bid Management, Marketing, Finance, HR, Legal, IT and Operations.

This is a new, senior individual contributor role. You turn a country-based sales team into one operating model: a single forecast, one set of processes and one CRM as the backbone. In your first year you lead a major CRM project as business owner, working with an implementation partner, so that all sales processes, reporting and forecasting are built on it.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and lead the CRM project as business owner, coordinating the implementation partner, internal stakeholders, planning, scope and budget
• Translate commercial processes into clear requirements and a target design, and ensure migration, testing, training and adoption are delivered to a high standard
• Own the CRM after go-live as the single source of truth for Sales, including data quality, governance, reporting and roadmap
• Own the sales forecasting process and cadence, including stage definitions, exit criteria and pipeline reviews with the Sales Directors
• Build the KPI framework and automated dashboards on pipeline, conversion, win rates, deal velocity and bookings
• Design and document the commercial process from lead handover to quote-to-order, including pricing governance, discount approvals and deal desk
• Support Bid Management with process, templates and a structured go/no-go and bid review approach
• Design and maintain commission plans for the own sales team, including target setting, modelling, individual agreements and payout calculations, with Finance and HR
• Support annual planning, including territory design, targets and capacity planning
• Build the onboarding and enablement foundation for new sales hires
• Collaborate with Marketing, Finance, IT and Operations to create one seamless lead-to-order process
• Contribute to continuous improvement of processes and tools, with automation as the default

Nice to Have

• Experience in fiber optics, sensing, energy, defense or another high-tech environment
• Experience with complex, long-cycle sales including tenders, bids or government procurement
• Experience with multiple CRM platforms (e.g. Salesforce and HubSpot) and data migration between them
• Deal desk experience, including pricing governance and discount approvals
• Experience designing sales compensation and commission plans in B2B
• Experience in a scale-up with rapid commercial team growth

Requirements

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in business, economics, engineering, information management or a related field, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of experience in Sales Operations, Revenue Operations or a similar commercial operations role in B2B
• Proven experience as business owner, product owner or project lead in a CRM implementation or migration, working with an implementation partner
• Solid knowledge of an enterprise CRM platform such as Salesforce
• Proven ownership of a forecasting and pipeline management process
• Experience building dashboards and KPI frameworks (CRM reporting, Power BI or similar)
• Excellent command of English, written and spoken; Dutch preferred
• Strong communication skills, the confidence to challenge senior colleagues and a collaborative, hands-on mindset
• Ability to pass a background / security screening