Director of Defense Growth & Autonomy Strategy

ARA; Warrendale (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 165,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Neya/ARA seeks a Director of Defense Growth & Strategy to drive long-term opportunity development across key DoD stakeholders, shaping autonomy and robotics programs to align with the company’s capabilities. Operating at the T12 level, this role represents Neya/ARA as a senior technical and strategic partner to government leadership.

The position requires strong DoD expertise, senior-level relationship skills, and the ability to work independently on complex, high-impact efforts.

Qualifications

• Typically 12-15+ years of relevant experience with a bachelor’s degree, or 10-12+ years with a master’s degree.
• Proven track record shaping requirements and acquisition approaches for major defense initiatives, ideally involving autonomous systems, robotics, or advanced technologies.
• Established, trusted relationships with senior leaders across key DoD commands.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain credible, senior-level engagements with DoD organizations, including PEOs, PMs, requirements officers, S&T leaders, and technical authorities, with a focus on autonomy and robotics mission areas.
• Drive early opportunity shaping by informing requirements, budget trajectories, and acquisition pathways for autonomy and robotics programs long before formal release.
• Drive strategic engagement efforts to identify autonomy- and robotics-related mission requirements, emerging capability needs, and future program trajectories.
• Lead the development of win strategies and competitive discriminators for major autonomy and robotics pursuits, exercising sound judgment in pursue/no-pursue determinations.
• Collaborate with Capture Managers to maintain alignment between pre‑RFP shaping work and subsequent capture execution for autonomy and robotics programs.
• Prepare well‑substantiated white papers and technical briefs that present Neya/ARA capabilities in autonomy, robotics, modeling and simulation, and AI/ML, and support government program development.
• Lead senior-level briefings that communicate autonomy and robotics technical capabilities to government decision-makers, industry partners, and organizational leadership.
• Engage with engineering leadership to shape internal R&D and product investments based on DoD autonomy and robotics demand signals.

Skills

DoD program leadership

Strategic growth

Engagement with senior DoD leaders

Acquisition strategy

Senior stakeholder management

Education

BS in Engineering

MS in related field

Job description

Neya/ARA seeks a Director of Defense Growth & Strategy to drive long-term opportunity development across key DoD stakeholders, shaping autonomy and robotics programs to align with the company’s capabilities. Operating at the T12 level, this role represents Neya/ARA as a senior technical and strategic partner to government leadership.

The position requires strong DoD expertise, senior-level relationship skills, and the ability to work independently on complex, high-impact efforts.