SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Vannevar Labs builds AI systems for the Department of Defense's most critical missions, with 125+ deployments across all military branches and combatant commands. The company deploys engineers, product teams, and leadership directly to operational units to solve real-world mission problems, including recent work supporting 24/7 operations with 9,000+ users in three months during major combat operations.
You will embed with Navy users in San Diego as a forward-deployed Mission Strategist, spending most of your time on-site working on government networks and classified platforms. Your core responsibility is identifying high-impact mission problems, breaking them into testable hypotheses, and validating solutions through rapid iteration with operators.
Key responsibilities include:
- Embedding with users on watch floors, at training facilities, and during fleet exercises to understand workflows and identify manual work that can be automated
- Converting ambiguous problems into hypotheses testable within days, adjusting based on learning
- Configuring and validating AI workflows by writing and tuning prompts, agent workflows, databases, reports, and dashboards on classified networks
- Testing releases on classified systems and providing engineering with specific, reproducible feedback
- Owning funded prototypes end-to-end: running discovery with operators, building sprint plans with engineering, testing on the high side, demoing to program leadership, and scoping follow-on work
- Building demos and concepts to show new user groups what's possible
- Partnering with Mission Leads and business development on scoping, cost estimates, and future work
This is not a traditional customer success or solutions role. The work is hands-on and iterative—you may rewrite prompts multiple times, debug configurations for hours, and work through unclear, changing problems. You will have support from product, engineering, and leadership, but you decide where to focus and how to maximize mission impact.
REQUIREMENTS:
- U.S. Person status with at least a current Secret US DoD or IC clearance (TS/SCI preferred)
- Based in San Diego or willing to relocate; this is an in-person role
- Experience using technology to solve hard operational problems, either from building products (product management, engineering) or fielding new technology in the military
- Track record of creatively scoping ambiguous problems and generating strong hypotheses when the path isn't clear
- Comfort with hands-on technical work; willingness to iterate until solutions work
- Curiosity about agentic AI and real-world workflow applications
- High ownership and ability to operate independently
- Clear writing skills to translate field observations into actionable updates for engineers and leadership
- Professional presence with operators and senior leaders
NICE TO HAVE:
- Navy experience, especially in ISR, targeting, maritime operations, or unmanned systems
- Time on a watch floor or in an operations center
- Experience building with LLM-based tools or light scripting
