Senior Manager, Business Development & Strategic Marketing

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** Sales and Business Development At Ingevity, we develop innovations that purify, protect and enhance the world around us. Our products enable oil to flow better, crops to grow fuller, roads to last longer and ensure that the air we all breathe is cleaner.

Our people come from all different backgrounds and help reimagine new possibilities daily. We understand there is no challenge too big and no contribution too small. We seek out new ideas for tackling complex problems and celebrate achieving the improbable. We value each person’s unique talents and synergize them to create meaningful impact and sustainable solutions for our customers and our world.
** Bold. Energetic. Ingenious. Genuine.
** If these qualities describe you, we’d love for you to join Ingevity!
** Position Overview**:

We’re looking for someone who genuinely enjoys figuring things out - someone who is curious, willing to test ideas, talk to customers early, and help us separate the winners from the nice-to-have ideas. This role sits inside our Performance Materials team and will partner directly with a technical lead to take early-stage opportunities from rough concept through the Stage Gate process and toward commercialization.

This is a hands-on role, not a desk-only strategy job. You will spend time with customers, observe how they work, ask questions, and help us learn quickly what matters and what doesn’t. You’ll also help us make smarter choices about where to invest our time and where to say “not worth it.”If you like building something from the ground up, enjoy ambiguity, and don’t need every detail perfectly defined before you move forward, you’ll do well here.

This role may be classified at either the Manager or Director level depending on the experience and capability of the selected candidate. The responsibilities below reflect the full scope of the role; some elements may be emphasized more heavily at the Director level.
** How you'll impact Ingevity:
** Lead the commercial side of early-stage growth opportunities
* Build a simple, clear commercial picture of each opportunity - who it’s for, why it matters, what they’re using today, and what would make them switch.
* Work side-by-side with a technical counterpart to make sure we’re prioritizing the right technical features, not just the ones that seem interesting internally.
* Help guide ideas through Stage Gate by grounding decisions in real customer feedback instead of assumptions.
* Oversee the commercial strategy for multiple platforms at once, helping shape where we focus our time and investment across the broader portfolio.
* Help set or refine the criteria we use to greenlight, pause, or stop opportunities, and bring a stronger voice into investment discussions at Stage Gate reviews.

Talk to customers early and often
* Get out of the building: talk to potential users, buyers, engineers, and anyone who actually touches or specifies the product.
* Turn customer conversations into insights: what they value, what they ignore, what would make or break adoption.
* Build early relationships with the kinds of customers who can help us learn quickly.

Shape early strategic marketing work without the jargon
* Identify the most promising segments and applications - not with a huge binder, but with a clear story about who cares and why.
* Translate customer needs into value propositions that make sense and can be tested.
* Work with Research & Technology technical team (R&T) to make sure development lines up with what customers actually need, not what we assume they’ll want.
* Define the long-term platform growth strategy including where each opportunity fits and how we position ourselves across segments.

Support commercialization without over promising structure
* When an idea shows promise, help us define the basics: how it gets positioned, what matters for adoption, and where it logically fits in the value chain.
* Help us understand what early trials, specs, or qualifications might look like.
* Prepare the opportunity so that, when the time comes, a salesperson can pick it up and run with it.
* Lead the early commercialization strategy for…