SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: CAD 200,000 - 240,000 / annual
SkyWatch is building a sovereign version of its earth observation data platform for Canada's defence and government environments. This is a founding role: you will be the first hire and technical owner of the Government & Defence engineering team, reporting directly to the CEO.
You own the complete architecture of the sovereign product line, including deployment in private cloud, on-premises, and air-gapped environments. Your responsibilities span:
**Architecture & Security**: Design deployment architecture for constrained environments with data segregation, secure multi-tenant distribution, and end-to-end security. Lead technical accreditation against ITSG-33 controls at Protected B level, embedding audit and logging into the product rather than bolting them on.
**User Experience**: Set a high bar for usability in high-pressure, often disconnected environments where security constraints are real. Make the system simple, fast, and obvious for analysts and operators—security is never an excuse for a clumsy product.
**Interoperability**: Deliver integration with defence data standards (NITF/NSIF, SIDD, GeoPackage, STANAG 4559) and common operating picture, GIS, and TAK environments.
**AI Integration**: Bring LLM and agent workflows inside the security boundary with trace retention for audit, human-in-the-loop analyst workflows, and evaluation of answer quality and latency.
**Team Building & Delivery**: Hire and lead approximately six engineers and two co-op seats over 2027. Own the roadmap and SDLC for Government & Defence, act as technical acceptance authority at each milestone gate, and run a co-op mentorship programme with local universities.
**Commercial Judgment**: Understand sovereign deployment costs and build solutions once for many customers rather than once per contract. Make trade-offs a CEO would recognize.
**Government Support**: Own the support surface—agent, user experience, and knowledge corpus—inside the sovereign access boundary.
You will sit across the table from government technical authorities, often in the same week you design the system and hire the team. This is a founding role with real say over what gets built and how.
**Requirements:**
- 10+ years building production software, including 3+ years as a principal, architect, or technical lead on secure or defence systems
- Hands-on experience with on-premises, private-cloud, or air-gapped deployment
- Experience with security assessment and authorization (ITSG-33, NIST 800-53, or equivalent)
- Experience leading an engineering team through milestone-based delivery to a government customer
- Demonstrated software for analysts or operators with high usability standards (must be able to walk through at unclassified level)
- Experience making build decisions with business trade-offs (cost to deliver, reuse across customers, time to market)
- Canadian citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a Government of Canada security clearance (Secret or higher)
- Strongly preferred: experience with geospatial, imagery, or ISR data and defence interoperability standards
- Preferred: experience deploying LLM or agent systems in regulated environments
