Forward Deployed Mission Strategist, Navy

Sitreps; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 165,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental and vision insurance

401(k) match

Unlimited PTO

Fully paid parental leave

Wellness and lifestyle stipends

Job summary

Venture-backed defense AI software company, based in San Diego, is seeking a Forward Deployed Mission Strategist for Navy operations. The role is embedded with Navy users on-site, designing AI agent workflows, prompts, and dashboards for live, classified environments.

You will lead funded prototypes end-to-end, collaborating with Mission Leads and engineers to shape next phases of work. A strong background in applying tech to operational challenges is required.

Qualifications

• Active Secret clearance at minimum (TS/SCI preferred).
• Living in the San Diego area, or willing to move; on-site role.
• Background applying tech to tough operational challenges in military contexts.
• Ability to frame fuzzy problems into testable hypotheses with sharp focus.
• Comfort with hands-on technical work, including prompt refinement and configuration troubleshooting.
• Genuine interest in agentic AI and applying it to practical problems.
• Strong ownership, initiative, and independent work style.
• Clear, concise writing for operators and senior officers.

Responsibilities

• Spend time with sailors and civilians in operations centers and fleets to understand day-to-day manual efforts.
• Frame problems as quick experiments that can be validated within days and adjust direction based on results.
• Build and refine prompts, AI agent workflows, data stores, reports, and dashboards for live use.
• Check new releases on classified systems, report bugs clearly and reproducibly to engineers.
• Lead funded prototypes from discovery to closing demos, including sprint plans and dependencies.
• Create fast demos and concepts to win buy-in from new user groups.

Skills

Active clearance

San Diego area residency

Operational problem framing

Hands-on technical work

Agentic AI interest

Ownership & independence

Crisp writing

Job description

Forward Deployed Mission Strategist, Navy

Company: Venture-backed defense AI software company (name disclosed upon mutual interest)
Location: San Diego, California. In person, on site with Navy users most of the week.
Role Type: Full-Time Employee
Clearance: U.S. Person with an active Secret clearance at minimum (TS/SCI preferred)
Compensation: $165,000–$185,000 base, plus equity

About the Client

Our client builds AI-enabled software for high-stakes U.S. military and national security missions. Its software is already in operational use across the armed services, and its people (engineers and product leaders included) work forward, side by side with the units that own the mission, rather than building from a distance.

About the Role

This is a forward-deployed role embedded with Navy users in San Diego, where the company's software is already in use. Most of your week will be spent at user sites and working on government networks.

You will pinpoint the operational problems with the biggest payoff, frame them as hypotheses, and prove them in the product. A large share of the work is hands-on setup: designing AI agent workflows, prompts, databases, reports, and alerts on a classified platform, then refining them alongside users until they are dependable in live operations. The rest is new capability that you will scope and deliver together with the engineering team.

It is common for you to lead a funded prototype from start to finish: operator discovery, sprint planning with engineers, building and testing on classified systems, demos for program leadership, and shaping what comes next.

This is not a typical customer success, solutions, or product job. Some of the work is gritty, configurations can take many iterations, and problems are often unclear and shifting. You will work hand in hand with the Mission Leads, who manage the customer relationship and the route to a program of record, and with the platform engineers. Help is always available, but the call on where to focus is yours.

Responsibilities

• Spend time with sailors and civilians in operations centers, training commands, and fleet exercises, getting to know their day-to-day work closely enough to see the manual effort they have learned to live with.
• Frame fuzzy problems as quick experiments that can be checked within days, and change course as the results come in.
• Build and refine the prompts, AI agent workflows, data stores, reports, and dashboards that turn an operational problem into a usable tool, and confirm they work for real users doing real tasks.
• Check new releases on classified systems, find what breaks, and hand engineers clear, repeatable bug reports.
• Lead funded prototypes from the first discovery session to the closing demo, including sprint plans, government dependencies, and progress updates.
• Put together fast demos and concepts that get new user groups excited about what the software can do.
• Work with the Mission Leads and business development team on scope, pricing estimates, and the next phase of work.

Requirements

Must-Haves

• Active Secret clearance at minimum (TS/SCI preferred) and U.S. Person status.
• Living in the San Diego area, or open to moving there. The job is on site.
• A background applying technology to tough operational challenges, whether as a product manager or engineer, or by bringing new tech into service in the military.
• A history of making sense of open-ended problems and coming up with sharp hypotheses when there is no clear path.
• Comfort with hands-on technical work: rewriting a prompt ten times and digging into why a configuration misbehaves until it works.
• Genuine interest in agentic AI and putting it to work on practical problems.
• A strong sense of ownership and the ability to work on your own.
• Crisp writing, and the presence to work comfortably with both operators and senior officers.

Nice-to-Haves

• A Navy background, particularly in ISR, targeting, maritime ops, or unmanned systems.
• Experience standing watch or working in an operations center.
• Hands-on work with LLM tools, or some basic scripting.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary is $165,000 to $185,000, plus equity.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) match
• Unlimited PTO
• Fully paid parental leave
• Wellness and lifestyle stipends