Senior Director C2

raft; Honolulu (HI); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Raft in the United States seeks a Senior Director of Command and Control to bridge warfighters and engineers, translating operational needs into capabilities delivered through MAKA Edge and Raft platforms. This role emphasizes C2 innovation across PACAF, with direct engagement with operators and leaders to shape user-driven solutions.

You will collaborate with Raft product and engineering teams, establish capability roadmaps, run discovery sessions, and help adopt open-architecture approaches

Responsibilities

• Lead C2 innovation efforts focused on solving high-value operational challenges across PACAF and the broader Indo-Pacific theater.
• Build strong working relationships across PACAF headquarters, Air Operations Centers, operational units, and Joint mission partners to understand operational priorities and identify opportunities for digital modernization.
• Conduct mission discovery with operators and leaders to identify problems that can be addressed through software, data, artificial intelligence, automation, or improved integration.
• Translate operational requirements into clear problem statements, priorities, and desired mission outcomes that product, design, and engineering teams can act upon.
• Identify repetitive, manual, disconnected, or data-intensive C2 processes that can be simplified or automated.
• Work alongside Raft product and engineering teams throughout development and integration, providing operational context, validating requirements, gathering user feedback, and ensuring capabilities solve the intended mission problem.
• Help establish and prioritize capability roadmaps based on mission value, operational demand, user adoption, and technical feasibility.

Job description

This is a U.S. based position. All of the programs we support require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment. All work must be conducted within the continental U.S.

Who we are:

Raft ( https://TeamRaft.com ) is a customer-obsessed non-traditional defense tech company dedicated to empowering U.S. military and government agencies with cutting-edge AI/ML and data solutions. We are a leader in autonomous data fusion and Agentic AI, with a purposeful focus on Distributed Data Systems, Platforms at Scale, and Complex Application Development. With headquarters in McLean, VA, our range of clients includes innovative federal and public agencies leveraging design thinking, cutting-edge tech stack, and cloud-native ecosystem. We build digital solutions that impact the lives of millions of Americans.

About the role:

As a Senior Director of Command and Control , you will bridge the gap between warfighters and engineers by bringing deep operational command and control expertise to Raft's most important customer engagements.

This Field CTO role is focused on command and control innovation in the Pacific , with an emphasis on identifying operational challenges, evaluating potential solutions, and helping rapidly deliver capabilities that improve mission execution.

You will work directly with operational users and senior leaders to understand how they execute the mission, identify opportunities to improve their workflows, and translate those needs into capabilities that can be delivered through MAKA Edge or other available platforms and technologies. When an operational team needs a new dashboard, form, database, workflow, application, automation, or data integration, you will help define the problem and work with Raft's product and engineering teams and experts across PACAF to determine the best way to deliver the capability.

You will also help evaluate emerging government and commercial technologies for potential operational use. Where a third-party application or capability provides value, you will work with the appropriate technical teams and mission partners to determine how it can be integrated into the appropriate operational environment and connected to existing data, applications, and workflows.

This is not a software engineering role. Your value comes from a deep understanding of command and control, air operations, operational planning, and how technology can improve mission execution. You will provide the operational context that enables engineers and product teams to build and integrate the right capabilities, while keeping the focus on real mission needs and measurable operational outcomes.

What You'll Do

• Lead C2 innovation efforts focused on solving high-value operational challenges across PACAF and the broader Indo-Pacific theater.
• Build strong working relationships across PACAF headquarters, Air Operations Centers, operational units, and Joint mission partners to understand operational priorities and identify opportunities for digital modernization.
• Conduct mission discovery with operators and leaders to identify problems that can be addressed through software, data, artificial intelligence, automation, or improved integration.
• Translate operational requirements into clear problem statements, priorities, and desired mission outcomes that product, design, and engineering teams can act upon.
• Identify repetitive, manual, disconnected, or data-intensive C2 processes that can be simplified or automated.
• Help determine the most appropriate technical approach for solving operational problems, whether through MAKA Edge, another Raft platform, an existing government environment, or a third-party capability.
• Work alongside Raft product and engineering teams throughout development and integration, providing operational context, validating requirements, gathering user feedback, and ensuring capabilities solve the intended mission problem.
• Help establish and prioritize capability roadmaps based on mission value, operational demand, user adoption, and technical feasibility.
• Facilitate operational discovery sessions, demonstrations, experimentation, and user feedback sessions focused on solving specific mission problems.
• Identify emerging commercial and government technologies that may provide operational value to PACAF and other mission partners.
• Evaluate third-party applications and capabilities based on their ability to improve mission outcomes and, when appropriate, help determine how they can be integrated into existing operational environments.
• Champion an open-architecture approach in which capabilities developed by Raft, government organizations, and other commercial technology companies can operate together within a coherent mission environment.
• Help move promising concepts from operational need to prototype to fielded capability through rapid experimentation and iteration.
• Measure the adoption and operational impact of delivered capabilities and use those results to inform future pr