Mission Lead - Economic Security (Clearance Required)

Vannevar; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Remote friendly with WeWork access

Unlimited PTO

401(k) match

Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends

Salary top-up during military reserve

Fully paid parental leave

Child and pet care reimbursement

Job summary

Vannevar builds AI systems for the Department of War's most consequential missions. This Mission Lead role focuses on deploying economic security solutions across the U.S. government, foreign partners, and commercial sectors, protecting critical technologies and supply chains.

You will own end-to-end customer relationships, develop field-tested theses, and translate field learnings into product and security requirements while working closely with product and engineering teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years owning outcomes in complex, ambiguous government or defense environments.
• Experience in national security strategic and economic competition.
• Curiosity for leading-edge software and new tech applications.
• Synthesis of mission needs into concrete workflows and deployments.
• Ability to articulate why technology solves mission problems better than alternatives.

Responsibilities

• Own a portfolio of economic security deployments for government and partners.
• Develop hypotheses about mission problems and convert to deployments.
• Build a product-market-fit thesis linking missions to workflows.
• Deliver technical narratives and tailored demonstrations for stakeholders.
• Expand user groups and coordinate with product, engineering, and field engineers.
• Navigate contracting realities and translate demand into deployments.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Stakeholder management

Technical fluency

Autonomy

Communication to executives

Job description

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

We’re hiring a Mission Lead to build and grow Vannevar’s work in economic security. You’ll own a portfolio of deployments across the U.S. government, foreign partner governments, and commercial sector, working on missions focused on protecting critical technologies and supply chains, strengthening industrial capacity, and countering adversary economic activity.

Your job is to find hard, important problems where Vannevar’s technology can make a difference—and turn those problems into deployments. You’ll develop hypotheses about customer needs, identify the workflows behind them, and build a clear point of view on why Vannevar can solve those problems better than existing tools or commercial alternatives. From there, you’ll find the right users, get our technology in their hands, prove value, and turn successful trials into sustained, revenue-generating deployments.

This is not a traditional business development, customer success, or solutions role. You won’t be handed a mature market, a defined customer set, or a playbook to follow. You’ll be expected to develop your own thesis about where we should focus, conduct the research to become credible in the mission, and build highly tailored demonstrations and technical narratives for everyone from working-level users to senior executives.

You’ll own your customer relationships end to end. That means earning trust with users, expanding into adjacent mission groups, and finding ways to grow deployments once we’ve proven value. You’ll also work closely with Product, Engineering, and forward-deployed engineers to translate what you learn in the field into product, collection, and security requirements.

U.S. Persons status with at least a current Top Secret clearance in required. This is a customer-facing role required to be based in Washington, D.C. Work will require time in secure or classified environments and periodic travel.

What you’ll do

• Own a portfolio of economic security deployments. Serve as the primary relationship owner for a set of customers working economic security missions, spanning the U.S. government, foreign partner governments, and in the commercial sector. This requires an intuitive understanding of adversary activities and the missions aimed at securing critical technologies, supply chains, and strengthening industrial capacity.
• Develop hypotheses about mission problems and convert these into deployments. Identify new customer groups and develop strategies to land engagements, initiate trials, and advance the engagement into revenue-generating deployments.
• Build and defend a product-market-fit thesis. For each account, name the specific mission problem, connect it to a concrete workflow, and show the customer how and why Vannevar’s technology solves it in a way the customer's current tools, and other commercial alternatives, cannot.
• Develop and deliver technical narratives with senior stakeholders. Conduct deep research to understand customer mission needs, and translate that knowledge to develop credible technical narratives and hyper-tailored technology demonstrations and briefings for working level to executive customers.
• Sustain and expand fielded user groups. Establish engagement techniques (e.g. syncs, push updates, in-person engagements) to grow user numbers and expand across adjacent mission groups.
• Partner cross-functionally. Work with Product, Engineering, and forward-deployed engineers to scope development, collection, and security requirements requirements against customer needs, and keep account knowledge current for the team.
• Exercise sound judgment in ambiguous, still-forming environments. Operate independently inside organizations whose structure or mission may not be finalized yet, knowing when to move fast and when to socialize a new thesis internally before acting externally.
• Navigate programmatic and contracting realities. Develop an understanding of budget cycles and contracting vehicles to create and exploit opportunities for new deployments. Work directly with government contracting officers to translate customer demand into revenue-generating deployments.

What we’re looking for

• 5+ years owning outcomes in complex, ambiguous government, defense, or intelligence community environments
• Prior national security experience relevant strategic and economic competition. In other words, you understand the missions, customer needs, and opportunities, because you've lived them
• Deep curiosity and interest in working with leading-edge software: you enjoy working with new technology, understanding how it works, and developing new techniques/applications to solve tough national security missions.
• Conceptual thinking skills: you can synthesize and connect data points about the mission, customer requirements, and technological capabilities into ideas for new missions, expansion, and products.
• Strong product-market-fit instincts: you can describe a specific mission problem, connect it to a concrete software workflow, and articulate why our technology solves it in a way current tools do not
• High level of comfort operating with high autonomy in ambiguous, still-forming organizations: you can take minimal guidance and work with minimal supervision to achieve concrete outcomes.
• Sufficient technical fluency to partner credibly with Product and Engineering without overclaiming capability or deployment status
• Sound judgment about when to move fast, when to socialize a new thesis internally, and how to engage and communicate internally and externally

What we offer

• 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.