Are you a business development professional with experience selling food-safety, assurance, certification or technical services into retailers, foodservice businesses or wholesalers? Our client is an established UK professional-services business operating two respected brands across food certification and outsourced technical support. They are hiring their first dedicated Business Development Manager to support a new three-year growth plan. The appointment will introduce greater commercial focus and create a repeatable route to new revenue.
You will work directly with the Managing Director to build relationships with technical directors, buyers, specifiers and strategic partners. The focus is top-down selling: identifying gaps in supplier-assurance processes and developing programmes that can be adopted across networks of smaller suppliers. You will also open opportunities for labelling, product approval, due-diligence and other outsourced technical services. Alongside winning business, you will shape propositions, manage pipeline, support launches and help turn technical expertise into scalable commercial services.
We would like to speak with commercially ambitious people who have sold professional services into the food and drink market. Experience in testing, inspection, certification, supplier assurance, regulatory services or an adjacent sector would be valuable, but exact category experience is not essential. You must be confident engaging senior stakeholders, managing consultative sales cycles and translating complex customer needs into practical solutions. This could particularly suit a mid-career salesperson who wants more autonomy, influence and exposure than a larger organisation can offer.
You will join a small, collaborative business where the delivery teams are central to maintaining customer trust. The role offers a basic salary of £50,000 to £55,000, with a commission scheme currently expected to be between 3% and 5% of qualifying revenue. It is a hybrid role, initially requiring approximately one to two days each week with the team in North Oxfordshire before becoming more field based. There is no car allowance, but business mileage is reimbursed, and strong performance could lead to building and managing a wider commercial team.