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DEFCON AI is seeking a Technical Director to lead a cross-functional team delivering an AI-enabled decision-support capability for the federal government. This is a zero-to-one leadership role combining technical depth with organizational leadership.
You will own technical strategy, architecture, and execution from discovery through operational deployment. Your responsibilities include leading teams spanning product, design, software engineering, data architecture, applied analytics, AI solutioning, DevSecOps, cybersecurity, and quality engineering. You will translate mission needs and product priorities into clear technical plans, align software, data, AI, infrastructure, and security into an integrated system, and build a high-performing technical organization.
Key accountabilities: establish technical priorities and resolve dependencies between teams; make architecture and delivery decisions balancing speed, security, quality, and maintainability; identify and mitigate technical risks before they impact delivery; partner with customers and stakeholders; remain hands-on enough to challenge assumptions and solve hard problems.
Required qualifications include significant accomplishment in software engineering, AI/ML, data systems, analytics, DevSecOps, cybersecurity, or comparable technical discipline. You must demonstrate experience leading complex technical efforts across multiple teams, turning ambiguity into working systems, and delivering cloud-native software from concept through operations. US Citizenship and in-scope US Secret clearance are required. Willingness to travel up to 25% to customer sites, HQ, and vendor facilities.
Preferred: Active Top Secret clearance, zero-to-one product/platform leadership, experience in defense/intelligence/federal environments, AWS GovCloud and DevSecOps expertise, RMF/ATO/accreditation experience, AI/ML and LLM background, human-in-the-loop decision-support systems, and experience scaling technical teams during rapid growth.
