Head of Service & BD

Location: melbourne
Salary: Competitive
Job Type: permanent
Contact: Emma Heffernan
Our Client
Our client is a privately owned industrial automation and engineering business that has built a strong reputation delivering complex, high-performance automation solutions to leading manufacturing customers across Australia.

The business is now entering a significant growth phase, with a clear strategic priority to transform its service and aftermarket capability into a major revenue and profit driver. While historically service has played a relatively modest role in the overall business model, leadership is now focused on building a more structured, scalable, and commercially sophisticated service offering.

With a substantial installed base of equipment across key sectors, there is significant untapped opportunity to develop a lifecycle service model encompassing maintenance, spares, upgrades, and long-term support. 

This role sits at the centre of that transformation, with full backing from the executive team and a mandate to build a high-performing, growth-oriented service business.

The Role
This is a pivotal leadership position responsible for designing, building, and executing a three-year service growth strategy that materially increases the size, profitability, and strategic importance of the service division.

You will be accountable for both commercial growth and operational development, with a clear mandate to unlock value from the existing customer base while also identifying new market opportunities.

Key focus areas include:

  • Developing and executing a multi-year service growth strategy
  • Driving significant service revenue expansion through both existing and new customers
  • Embedding service thinking across the organisation, from pre-sales through to long-term lifecycle support
  • Building structured service offerings including contracts, SLAs, preventative maintenance programs, and upgrades
  • Identifying and pursuing new market segments and verticals (including targeted industries such as meat processing and packaging)
  • Exploring and assessing inorganic growth opportunities (partnerships and acquisitions)
  • Strengthening commercial performance across pricing, margins, and utilisation
  • Working closely with the sales team to ensure service is integrated into all new equipment sales

This role will also play a key part in evolving the service function from a reactive support model into a proactive, revenue-generating business unit.

The Individual
The successful candidate will be a commercially driven service leader with a proven ability to build and scale aftermarket or service businesses within industrial, engineering, automation, or capital equipment environments.

This is a builder–operator role, requiring both strategic capability and hands-on execution.

You will bring:

  • A demonstrated track record of growing service or aftermarket revenue, ideally from a low or underdeveloped base
  • Strong business development experience, including winning and expanding service contracts
  • Experience designing and implementing service growth strategies and commercial models
  • A “player-coach” leadership style — equally effective in the boardroom, with customers, and in operational execution
  • Strong commercial acumen across pricing, contracts, SLAs, and lifecycle revenue models
  • Technical credibility (mechanical or engineering understanding) to engage confidently with customers and field teams
  • Strong analytical capability in market mapping, installed base analysis, and competitor benchmarking


Experience in environments where service is evolving from a support function into a core revenue stream will be highly regarded.

Above all, this individual will be a builder of businesses, capable of unlocking significant value from an established customer base while shaping a scalable, high-margin service organisation.


We encourage applications from people of all backgrounds as we strive to create an inclusive and diverse working environment. Click on the APPLY button or contact Emma Heffernan at Six Degrees Executive on emmah@sixdegreesexecutive.com.au for a confidential discussion.


Six Degrees Executive acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work and live. We are also committed to equal opportunity and strive to promote diversity, inclusion, belonging, flexibility, and accessibility in all that we do.

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