Mission Lead - USV Software

Vannevar builds AI systems for the Department of War's most consequential missions. We have 125 deployments across every branch and combatant command spanning our core platform and five distinct products. An an example of how we work, when major combat operations started with Iran, we fielded a new product supporting 24/7 operations and 9,000+ users in three months.

How we build is our advantage: we deploy forward with the people who own the mission. Our engineers, product team, and CTO deploy forward to the point of friction, including visiting units in Ukraine. We focus on embedding directly with operational units supporting great power competition with China, combat operations with Iran, and counter-narcotics missions.

About the role

Most of the companies in the USV space build hulls. We are building the software that enables the planning, operational monitoring, and post-mission analysis for what these hulls do.

We're hiring a forward-deployed Mission Strategist to embed with the Navy's unmanned surface vessel community in Norfolk. This is an in-person, on-site role requiring you to work alongside USV operators at least 3 days per week - whether you're based locally, willing to relocate, or able to travel to Norfolk weekly . This includes waterfront and operational testing time that may involve additional travel during experimentation periods. The doctrine for USV operations is being written right now by the operators you'll be working with.

This is a 0 to 1 role. How these systems best operate and what software is required to most effectively enable these operations has not yet been determined. You will be on the cutting edge figuring this out with the Navy and with our mission and engineering teams.

Your job will be to understand what USV operators and mission commanders are trying to accomplish, decompose ambiguous operational problems into specific software problems, drive the capability development required to solve them, and implement that capability with the Navy. Some of that is configuration and workflow design in existing products. A meaningful share of it is net-new capability that we will be developing side-by-side our mission partners.

This is not a traditional customer success, solutions, or product role. You will be forward deployed with access to government systems and operational environments that most of the company will not have access to. You will translate between these USV teams and our engineers, identify and prioritize mission problems to solve from first-hand observation and test and troubleshoot releases. Some of this work will be gritty. Configurations may take hours and multiple iterations to get right. The impact of your work on the people operating these vessels and the future employment of these systems across the Navy will be high.

You will often operate independently on site. You will have support from product, engineering, mission development, and leadership, but you will be responsible for deciding where to focus and how to maximize mission impact.

What you’ll do

Embed with USV operators. Sit on-site with operators and mission planners in Norfolk and build deep intuition for how unmanned surface operations work including underway and during fleet experimentation.

Synthesize USV operational problems. Leverage the expertise you will develop by being on -site to help distill and prioritize the mission problems for us to work on.

Configure and prove workflows. Stand up high-value workflows through creative, iterative configuration and validate them against real mission tasks.

Test and troubleshoot releases. Debug product issues on deployed government systems and work with engineering to resolve them.

Generate mission wins. Leverage what we deploy during operations to generate wins with our Navy counter-parts.

Operate independently. Set priorities on site and push work through without waiting for perfect direction.

What we’re looking for

This role is required t …