Mission Strategist

Vannevar is a defense technology company building AI to deter our adversaries. In the 21st century, conflict moves at algorithmic speed and foresight equals firepower. Our agentic AI is purpose-built to compete with China—from cross-Strait conflict to gray zone coercion. Trained on the most mission-relevant datasets in defense, our technology models adversary behavior, simulates campaigns, and recommends the best course of action to decision makers. Our AI systems are some of the most trusted in the industry and actively used on the front lines of the Indo-Pacific to keep the peace and save lives.

Exceptional technology starts with exceptional people. Vannevar is a small agile team combining world-class engineers with veteran strategists who bring deep expertise in defense and tradecraft. We’re building a company defined by mission impact, user empathy, and disciplined growth. In just three years, we grew from $3M to $80M in ARR, achieved early profitability, and reached unicorn status—proving that disruption doesn’t require an ego, and staying power doesn’t mean standing still.

About the role

As a Mission Strategist at Vannevar you will work along side the Mission Strategy team on our most ambitious product and customer deployments. You will partner with user groups to scope and deliver high mission impact outcomes while partnering with engineering and other teams internally. You will become an expert on scoping mission problems with a group and will define and iterate on our solution to these problems using our products, your creativity, and partnership with engineering.

What you'll do

• Identify important mission problems with users that we can reasonably solve with Vannevar’s products or new product development. You will continuously adjust your hypotheses based on new information.

• Solve these problems and generate meaningful mission outcomes. This involves embedding with the user groups, becoming a domain expert on the mission problem, and using your creativity, our current products, and sometimes developing new products with the engineering team.

• Develop a thesis for a broader program that extends the work you do to other groups and develop a compelling mission pitch that ties to the program, including compelling demos.

• Help our business development team win program deals by partnering with them, traveling to customers, and getting those customers irrationally excited about the mission impact we can have.

What we look for

• A track record of creatively scoping ambiguous problems with the ability to generate strong hypotheses when faced with ambiguity – can be national security or general private sector experience.

• Grit and creativity to keep going when faced with a roadblock.

• Success in working problems to conclusion and trying different approaches until one works.

• Ability to work autonomously and set your own goals

• Ability to quickly learn new software products to generate outcomes.

• Demonstrated bias towards achieving an outcome even if it requires helping or doing the job of someone else on another team.

• Experience helping to iterate on a product with product design, product management and/or engineering teams is a plus but not needed

• Active TS / SCI Clearance is a plus but not needed

What we offer

Comprehensive Benefits

We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

• Health, dental, and vision insurance

• Remote friendly with WeWork access

• Unlimited PTO, shared downtime during the federal holiday calendar, and company-wide off time at the end of each year

• 401(k) match

• Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends

• Salary top-up during military reserve duty

• Fully paid parental leave

• Child and pet care reimbursement during travel

Vannevar is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you!

IMPORTANT NOTICE
We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.