Business Development Director - Infrastructure

In a world of possibilities, pursue one with endless opportunities. Imagine Next! At Parsons, you can imagine a career where you thrive, work with exceptional people, and be yourself. Guided by our leadership vision of valuing people, embracing agility, and fostering growth, we cultivate an innovative culture that empowers you to achieve your full potential. Unleash your talent and redefine what’s possible.

Job Description: In a world of possibilities, pursue one with endless opportunities. Imagine Next! Parsons is looking for a highly accomplished Business Development Director to lead strategic growth across Abu Dhabi’s infrastructure, transportation, urban development, hospitality, energy, and defense markets.

In this role, you will build trusted relationships with senior clients and partners, shape opportunities before formal procurement, and connect client priorities with Parsons’ technical, commercial, and delivery capabilities. Working closely with the Bid Studio and leaders across the business, you will develop differentiated pursuit strategies that convert market intelligence and relationships into sustainable growth.

What You’ll Be Doing: Client and Market Leadership Serve as a senior external representative for Parsons across Abu Dhabi’s priority markets. Build and maintain trusted relationships with government entities, government-related organisations, sovereign-backed programmes, private developers, investors, operators, contractors, and strategic partners.

Engage clients early to understand investment priorities, development programmes, procurement strategies, and anticipated requirements. Maintain a strong understanding of Abu Dhabi’s economic agenda and the evolving infrastructure, transportation, hospitality, energy, and defence landscape. Represent Parsons at client meetings, government briefings, industry forums, conferences, and strategic market events.

Opportunity Development and Pursuit Lead the identification, qualification, shaping, and progression of strategic opportunities from early market intelligence through award. Partner with the Bid Studio to assess strategic fit, client alignment, capability requirements, competitive position, risk, resources, and probability of success.

Develop winning and capture strategies, account and client engagement plans, win themes, and executive-level presentations. Prepare and contribute to bid/no-bid recommendations and ensure decisions reflect market potential, commercial considerations, risk posture, and organisational capacity. Remain actively engaged throughout pursuits, providing client insight and strengthening Parsons’ competitive position.

Collaboration and Strategic Partnerships Mobilise cross-functional support from commercial, legal, finance, marketing, communications, risk, procurement, operations, and technical teams. Connect client requirements with the right subject-matter experts and delivery teams across sectors, disciplines, and geographies.

Ensure client propositions are differentiated, commercially sound, technically credible, and operationally deliverable. Identify and develop relationships with consortium partners, joint venture partners, specialist consultants, contractors, operators, technology providers, and investors. Work with commercial and legal teams to evaluate appropriate partnership and delivery structures.

Pipeline and Account Management Build and maintain a high-quality opportunity pipeline across core and emerging sectors. Establish account plans for priority clients and strategic partners, with clear relationship, positioning, and growth objectives. Maintain accurate CRM records, forecasts, opportunity reports, and market intelligence. Lead Abu Dhabi’s pipeline and CRM reporting, forecasting requirements cycles.

Provide regular updates to senior leadership on market developments, client relationships, emerging risks, and business development priorities. Identify opportunities for repeat business, account expansion, and long-term strategic relationships. What Required Skills You’ll Bring: Bachelor’s degree in business, engineering, construction management, marketing, or a related discipline; an advanced degree is advantageous.

Typically 15+ years of progressive experience in business development, client management, capture, or growth roles, including substantial leadership experience in Abu Dhabi, or the wider UAE/ Middle East. Demonstrated success developing and converting complex opportunities in infrastructure, transportation, urban development, programme management, engineering, construction, or adjacent professional services markets.

Strong relationships and credibility with senior stakeholders across Abu Dhabi government entities, government-related organisations, developers, investors, operators, and delivery partners. Deep understanding of public- and private-sector procurement, opportunity qualification, capture planning, commercial strategy, teaming, and proposal development.

Strong commercial judgement, including the ability to evaluate strategic fit, risk, investment, competitive position, and probability of success. Exceptional executive communication, presentation, negotiation, and relationship-management skills. Ability to lead through influence and collaborate effectively across technical, operational, commercial, legal, finance, and corporate functions.

Proficiency with CRM platforms, pipeline governance, forecasting, and executive reporting. Arabic language capability is desired and preferred. What Desired Skills You’ll Bring: Established knowledge of Abu Dhabi’s infrastructure and economic development priorities. Experience across more than one of the following sectors: infrastructure, transportation, urban development, hospitality, energy, and defense.

Experience forming strategic alliances, consortiums, or joint ventures for complex pursuits. Track record of engaging clients early and shaping opportunities before formal procurement. Strong understanding of Parsons’ integrated design, programme and construction management, technical advisory, and digital capabilities.

Parsons equally employs representation at all job levels no matter the race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age, disability or genetic information. We truly invest and care about our employee’s wellbeing and provide endless growth opportunities as the sky is the limit, so aim for the stars! Imagine next and join the Parsons quest—APPLY TODAY!

Parsons is aware of fraudulent recruitment practices. To learn more about recruitment fraud and how to report it, please refer to https://www.parsons.com/fraudulent-recruitment/ .