Manager, Business Development, Civil Aviation

The 3M Manager, Business Development, Civil Aviation role is responsible for translating customer needs, industry megatrends, market applications, and voice-of-customer insights into actionable growth, innovation, portfolio, and commercialization priorities for aerospace airframe and structural applications.

This role focuses on identifying and framing high-value opportunities, advancing customer-backed growth initiatives, supporting business case development, and connecting market pull with 3M capabilities across application engineering, platform teams, Corporate Labs, product teams, marketing, sales, and portfolio management.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and maintain a clear understanding of aerospace and defense airframes and structures market needs, customer challenges, industry trends, priority applications, and growth spaces.
• Gather, synthesize, and represent customer pull and voice-of-customer insights to inform portfolio decisions, innovation priorities, new product introduction activity, and commercialization plans.
• Identify and frame new applications, cross-selling opportunities, technology gaps, and customer-backed growth opportunities across aerospace OEMs, tier suppliers, MROs, defense customers, and strategic accounts.
• Support development and vetting of business cases for vertical-relevant products, technologies, strategic customer opportunities, and external collaborations.
• Partner with application engineering to create product application heat maps for lead customers, priority accounts, and vertical growth areas.
• Connect customer needs and market opportunities with internal capabilities across Corporate Labs, platform teams, product teams, application engineering, marketing, sales, portfolio teams, and partner divisions.
• Support go-to-market strategy, launch readiness, customer demonstrations, trade shows, and customer-facing portfolio representation for vertical-relevant technologies and products.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing with sales, marketing, commercial, and technical teams on market trends, customer needs, value propositions, product updates, and competitive positioning.
• Represent aerospace and defense airframes and structures priorities in portfolio reviews, venture evaluation activity, innovation workshops, cross-functional planning forums, and collaboration initiatives.
• Execute and measure collaboration priorities and agreement metrics where applicable.
• Evaluate opportunities based on customer value, market attractiveness, technical feasibility, strategic fit, and commercial potential.
• Support progression of customer-backed opportunities through innovation, new product introduction, stage-gate, go-to-market, and commercialization readiness milestones.
• Represent the business in customer meetings, trade events, demos, industry forums, and collaboration discussions related to aerospace airframes, structures, and defense applications.

Your Skills and Expertise:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, Marketing, Materials Science, Electronics, Aerospace Engineering, or a science field.
• Seven (7) years of experience in business development, segment or product marketing, product management, technical sales, strategic marketing, or commercial strategy in a private, public, government or military environment.

Additional qualifications that could help you succeed even further in this role include:

• MBA or advanced degree in business, engineering, aerospace, materials science, or a related discipline.
• Experience in aerospace, defense, electronics, semiconductor, power electronics, advanced materials, or related technical markets.
• Experience with aerospace airframes and structures applications, including adhesives, tapes, films, composites, sealants, surface preparation, surface protection, structural bonding, or related technologies.

Benefits: 3M offers many programs to help you live your best life – both physically and financially. To ensure competitive pay and benefits, 3M regularly benchmarks with other companies that are comparable in size and scope.