Director of Sales

HoSt Bio-Energy Systems is seeking a detail-oriented Director of Sales to support our mission of delivering cutting-edge sustainable energy solutions. Join us in driving a cleaner, greener future while ensuring exceptional service operations for our clients. Long before renewable natural gas is produced, someone has to bring the right people together. At HoSt, that starts with the team. The salesperson who sees an opportunity before it becomes an RFQ. The Sales Engineer who turns a complex idea into a solution that can actually work. The marketer who creates awareness. Each person brings something different to the table, and each plays a role in bringing projects to life that might not otherwise exist. But talented people don’t automatically become a high-performing team. Someone has to create clarity around where they’s going and what is expected along the way. Someone has to connect the dots, build trust, hold people accountable, address what isn’t working, and create an environment where people take real ownership of their results. That’s where you come in. As Director of Sales for North America, your job isn’t to be the person who wins every project. It’s to build the team that can. If you get more satisfaction from watching your team win than being the person who gets the credit, enjoy developing people, aren’t afraid of accountability, and genuinely like building something that isn’t finished yet, you might be exactly the leader we’re looking for. This role has room to become significantly bigger. Today, we need someone focused on people, accountability, commercial execution, and building a stronger North American sales organization. Robert Lems will continue to play an active role in overall business and commercial strategy, while you turn that direction into consistent execution across the team. As you prove yourself and the North American business grows, that balance can change. There is a path for this role to grow into Chief Sales Officer responsibility, with greater ownership of commercial strategy, new products and technologies, market expansion, organizational design, and the broader direction of HoSt’s North American commercial organization. We aren’t hiring someone and promising them a title on a predetermined date. We’re creating an opportunity for the right person to earn a much bigger seat at the table. Key Details: Salary: This role offers a base salary between $180,000 and $220,000, depending on experience and overall alignment, plus target variable compensation equal to 50% of base salary tied to mutually agreed-upon performance goals. In the early years, those goals will be weighted toward the work required to build a stronger commercial organization: team performance, accountability, pipeline health, forecasting, commercial discipline, and execution. As the organization grows, the variable plan will increasingly reflect overall sales performance and revenue outcomes. Beyond base and variable compensation, this role also participates in HoSt’s management profit-sharing program and long-term incentive program, creating additional opportunity to share in the value you help build over time. This is meant to be more than a good year-one compensation package. We’re building an opportunity where someone who helps create substantial long-term value for HoSt can participate in that value. Location: This position is based in Vancouver, Washington, and we strongly prefer someone who can be part of the team in person when not traveling. Leadership presence matters in this role, particularly as you build relationships with the team and help shape the next stage of the commercial organization. Travel: Travel will include customer and key project meetings, industry trade shows, team collaboration, and time with colleagues in the Netherlands. Benefits: Employer-paid Medical, Vision and Dental; 401k Program with 4% Match; Unlimited Paid Vacation & Sick Leave; Flexible Spending Accounts; Short-term and Long-term Disability Insurance; Life and AD&D Insurance; Employee Assistance Program. Responsibilities What You’ll Do: Your success here won’t be measured by how many deals you personally swoop in and save. It will be measured by the team you build, the standards you create, the conversations you’re willing to have, and whether the people you lead become better because you’re leading them. You’ll oversee a small commercial team across sales, sales engineering, and marketing, creating alignment around what matters most and making sure everyone understands not only what they’re responsible for, but what successful execution actually looks like. That means regular conversations about pipeline, priorities, opportunities, performance, and where things are getting stuck. You’ll ask questions that force people to think more deeply. You’ll challenge assumptions. You’ll coach through problems without immediately solving them for someone. And when expectations aren’t being met, you’ll address it directly rather than allowing underperformance to become the new standard. Accountability matters here, including your own. When the team misses, your first instinct isn’t to point at the salesperson, the market, marketing, engineering, or an opportunity that unexpectedly stalled. You want to understand why. What did we know? What did we miss? What could we have influenced? What needs to change next time? That’s the kind of ownership we’re looking for. You’ll also be stepping into a commercial environment where deals aren’t simple. HoSt sells highly engineered renewable energy projects that can range from $5M to $20M and take 12 to 24 months to develop. A single opportunity can involve developers, engineers, financial partners, agricultural operators, consultants, project owners, and internal teams across multiple countries. You won’t personally run every deal, nor do we want you to. You will, however, know what’s happening in the important ones. You’ll help your team think strategically about stakeholders, risk, competitive positioning, project economics, contracts, and what actually needs to happen to move an opportunity forward. When your experience or involvement can materially change an outcome, you’ll know when to step in—and when to let your team lead. You’ll work closely with CEO Robert Lems and leadership in North America and the Netherlands. HoSt is a global organization, which means leadership here requires more than getting your own team to agree with you. You’ll need to build credibility across cultures, influence people you don’t directly manage, communicate clearly when perspectives differ, and know when to push versus when to listen. There will be ambiguity. There will be competing priorities. There will be things we’re still building. If you need every answer to already exist, this probably won’t be the right environment. If you like creating clarity where it doesn’t, keep reading. Job Qualifications Who You Are: You know how to build a team that can win without you in the room. You don’t measure your leadership by how dependent people are on you. You set expectations, proactively coach people to think for themselves, give them room to own their work, and hold them accountable for the results. Accountability isn’t something you only expect from other people. You own the number. You own the health of the team. You own the conversations that need to happen when performance slips. And when something isn’t working, you’re willing to look at your own leadership before assuming the problem lives somewhere else. You know the difference between managing activity and leading performance. A full CRM and a busy calendar don’t automatically mean the business is moving. You use data to understand what’s happening inside the commercial organization, ask better questions, identify patterns, challenge forecasts, and help the team focus on the actions most likely to produce results. You create an environment where people can tell you the truth. Bad news doesn’t get better with age, especially in a 12-to-24-month sales cycle. You want your team comfortable telling you that a deal is slipping, they made a mistake, they need help, or they disagree with you. You can hold a high bar without creating a culture where people are afraid to speak. You understand complex commercial sales. You may come from industrial process equipment, wastewater treatment, EPC, environmental technologies, renewable energy, industrial gas, infrastructure, process engineering, or another environment involving large engineered solutions and long sales cycles. You understand contracts, commercial risk, margins, project economics, forecasting, and the realities of multi-million-dollar deals. You communicate with clarity and consistency. Your team shouldn’t have to guess what matters this week or wonder whether expectations changed depending on the meeting. You’re direct, transparent, and willing to have difficult conversations while still treating people like people. You know how to influence without bulldozing. HoSt operates across North America and Europe, and different cultures, personalities, functions, and perspectives come with that. You don’t need everyone to think like you to work effectively with them. And you don’t necessarily need to have been a Director of Sales before. We’re open to the person who is ready for this step. Maybe you’ve led a smaller team. Maybe you’ve been the person other salespeople naturally turn to. Maybe you’ve been working underneath a great commercial leader and are ready to take everything you’ve learned and build something yourself. We’re more interested in your capacity to become an exceptional leader than whether you’ve already had the title. #J-18808-Ljbffr