Client Engagement Coordinator - Defense Americas in Huntsville, Alabama at Advanced Navigation

Advanced Navigation is the world’s most determined innovator in AI robotics and navigation technologies across land, air, sea and space applications. Founded on a culture of research and discovery, Advanced Navigation's mission is to be the catalyst of the autonomy revolution. Fields of expertise include artificial intelligence, underwater sonar, GNSS, radio frequency systems, inertial sensors, robotics, quantum sensors and photonics.

Today, Advanced Navigation is a supplier to some of the world's largest companies, including Airbus, Boeing, Google, Tesla, NASA, Apple, and General Motors. Discover it for yourself: https://youtu.be/F7uAqs1gtuk

This role owns the day-to-day execution of RFQ responses and business operations support for the commercial go-to-market team. You will be the central operational hub for quote preparation, compliance documentation, CRM management, and customer communication. This is an operations-focused sales role with commercial visibility and some outbound engagement. You need to be fast, detail-oriented, reliable under pressure, and capable of learning complex technical and contractual requirements on the job.

Quote Generation & Management (50%)

• Manage inbound quote intake and tracking from customers.
• Generate responses to customer quote requests (quotes, pricing, technical spec summaries, compliance documentation). You will not initially handle complex, multi-week bids, but you will own the quick turnaround on straightforward requests.
• Coordinate technical input from engineering and commercial details from management.
• Track status, deadlines, and customer submissions in the CRM.

Customer Communication & CRM Management (25%)

• Support inbound customer inquiries, route technical questions to the right team members, and ensure timely follow-up.
• Manage CRM data entry, opportunity tracking, and lead routing to align with go-to-market strategy.
• Maintain customer contact lists, account notes, and interaction history.

Outbound Engagement & Opportunity Development (15%)

• Support inbound lead follow-up and qualification alongside the go-to-market team.
• Help identify and surface customer needs that align with current product offerings.

Compliance & Contract Support (10%)

• Assist with customer terms review, export control compliance checks, and gaining proposal sign-off.
• Prepare compliance matrices (as needed), customer acknowledgments, and related documentation under guidance from contracts/compliance team.
• Ensure responses meet standard compliance and quality gates before delivery.

• Action-oriented and fast. You move proposals and responses out the door quickly. You are comfortable with some ambiguity and do not need every detail perfect before shipping. Velocity matters.
• Detail-focused and organized. You catch errors, track deadlines ruthlessly, and follow through on commitments. You keep multiple proposals moving without dropping items.
• Reliable and steady under pressure. This role has hard deadlines and competing priorities. You stay calm and communicate status clearly when things get tense.
• Curious and willing to learn. You pick up technical concepts, export control rules, contract language, and defense industry basics on the job. You ask questions and don't pretend to know things you don't.
• Communicative and collaborative. You work across engineering, sales, and management teams. You can summarize complex technical details for customers and distill customer needs for internal teams.
• Defense/government contracting awareness. Familiarity with the federal contracting environment, ITAR/EAR basics, or defense industry standards is a strong plus. This can come from prior work or willingness to learn quickly.

• Operations, business analyst, or technical coordinator experience in defense, government contracting, or enterprise B2B sales.
• Proposal coordination, RFQ response, or bid management experience.
• CRM experience (Salesforce, HubSpot, or similar).
• We are open to candidates from non-sales backgrounds (e.g., engineers, program coordinators, supply chain) who demonstrate the core attributes above. We are not looking for pure hunters or quota-driven sales reps. We are looking for someone with operational excellence, commercial awareness, and the ability to execute under velocity.