Aerospace & Defense Practice Lead

luminarycloud; San Mateo (CA); Remote; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Luminary, a San Mateo-based AI platform company, seeks a senior leader to own the aerospace and defense industry narrative. You will shape engagement theses, build a scalable value model, and partner with account teams to advance seven-figure programs.

You are the senior face in executive rooms, driving discovery, content, and strategy with field CTOs and delivery engineers. This is a remote-friendly, high-impact business leadership role.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in aerospace and defense with C-suite and government stakeholders
• Personally led $5M+ client relationships in aerospace/defense
• Strong in building financial models from sparse data

Responsibilities

• Own the aerospace/defense industry thesis and engagement value.
• Develop reusable engagement frameworks and reference architectures.
• Lead executive discovery and craft the executive meeting content.
• Shape strategy, buyers, and procurement approaches for key programs.
• Collaborate with Marketing to package industry narratives and insights.
• Report to Head of Sales; interact with the CEO as needed.

Skills

Aerospace & Defense leadership

Complex technical engagements

Executive relationship management

Financial modeling

Primary research

Practice development

Defense procurement knowledge

Executive presentation

Strategic account activation

Methodology building

Job description

Luminary helps engineering companies be more competitive by getting to market faster, creating new, better products, and reducing development risk. We do this with our Physics AI platform, the fastest and easiest way to build and deploy models to understand and instantly predict physical reality with precision. Customers span industries from automotive and aerospace, to leading sporting equipment providers, including Otto Aviation, Joby Aviation, Piper Aircraft and Trek Bikes. Luminary is a Series B company and is headquartered in San Mateo, California.

Full-time position | Anywhere, USA (Remote)

Note: In accordance with export control regulations, this position requires candidates to qualify as a U.S. Person (U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual as defined under 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(3)). For engagements with cleared customers, an active or obtainable U.S. security clearance is preferred but not required.

The Role

• Be Luminary's senior industry counterpart for aerospace and defense. When a customer CEO, program executive, or general officer needs to talk to someone who understands their world, you're that person.
• Own the industry. Your work should touch every deal in the vertical: the industry POV, the engagement theses, the value model, the executive relationship map.
• Build the practice IP: reusable engagement frameworks, reference architectures, case studies, and a value model quantified against customer programs and baselines, including capability gained, not just cost removed. We don't have validated value data yet. Establishing it is your first mandate.
• Be the person our team and customer executives seek out for industry expertise. Partner with the account team to open and develop relationships above the champion. You are often the reason the executive meeting happens and the voice in the room.
• Pair with account teams on strategic accounts through a formal activation gate. Head of Sales proposes, you accept or decline in writing, with reasons. You carry a handful of accounts deeply.
• On activated accounts: own the engagement thesis, the business case, and the executive narrative. Run executive discovery with the champion and the layer above, own the content of the executive meeting, and be in the room for it.
• Shape Luminary's aerospace and defense strategy: which programs, which buyers, which procurement vehicles, in what order.
• Set the industry POV and partner with Marketing to package and distribute it. Collaborate with marketing on what we say to the industry.
• This is a business role. You're conversational in our technology and fluent in the technical problems our customers face, and you know when to bring in the Field CTO and delivery engineers rather than play one.
• Feed Product, Marketing, and the CEO what you learn about how these customers fund programs and where our capability stops short of the business case.
• Reports to Head of Sales. Direct line to the CEO.

How This Works With the Account Team

• AEs land deals without you. You are never a gate on the sales process.
• The AE owns the account commercially: pipeline, pricing, negotiation, procurement, upsell, and expansion. You own the industry thesis and the case that turns a pilot into a funded program, and you partner with the AE to develop the executive relationships above the champion.
• You help open the executive room and carry the industry narrative in it. The AE closes the commercial. If the exec asks about price, you bring the AE in. Full stop.
• Activation criteria, any one of: credible path to a seven-figure program within 12 months; the next conversation must happen above the champion; or a named lighthouse account where the industry story depends on the outcome.

What Success Looks Like

• You're the speaker at a dinner of aerospace executives on the challenges in A&D that Physics AI can solve, and the room takes you seriously as a peer
• We pursue an eight-figure proposal with a US government customer. You're instrumental in shaping the thesis, building the proposal, and helping sell it.
• Two accounts move from scoped pilots to funded seven-figure executive programs, on a business case you built with the customer's own numbers
• The A&D value model exists, has survived contact with a customer finance organization, and every AE in the vertical uses it

You

• 10+ years in aerospace and defense, including leading complex technical engagements with C-suite and senior government stakeholders
• Have personally led $5M+ client relationships with aerospace or defense executives
• Comfortable as the senior person in the room with flag officers, PEOs, and defense company CEOs
• Can build a financial model from incomplete data, defend the assumptions to a hostile audience, and revise it when the audience is right
• Strong at primary research. Getting engineers and program managers to give you real baseline numbers is harder than the modeling.
• Have built or significantly grown a practice, business line, or sector offering, not just delivered within one
• Understand defense procurement: OTA, SBIR/STTR, POM cycles, program office budgets, IDIQ, FAR/DFARS
• Can hold a technical conversation about simulation, CFD, and engineering workflows without pretending to be the engineer
• Know the difference between being credible on the technology and being the technologist. This role is the former.
• Willing to say no. A practice lead who accepts every account request becomes a slide service.
• Comfortable building the method from scratch

Nice to Have

• Background in aerospace engineering, materials, CFD, computational physics, or simulation
• Existing relationships across AFLCMC, NAVAIR, DARPA PMs, DIU leadership, or primes
• Active clearance, TS/SCI preferred
• Experience standing up a practice or industry function

Not This Role If You

• Want a territory and a full quota. The AE sells. You make the industry sellable.
• Want to be the industry's chief engineer. We have a Field CTO. This is the business counterpart.
• Expect the value model to be handed to you. Building it is the first assignment.
• Treat a business case as a deck rather than an analysis someone will attack
• Need the account team to run discovery for you
• Come from enterprise software with no aerospace or defense context, or from defense with no experience quantifying business value
• Are uncomfortable declining an account that isn't ready for you
• Can't explain why physics matters to a warfighter or a CEO