Mission Strategist - San Diego (Clearance Required)

About the role

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 forward-deployed Mission Strategist to embed with Navy users in San Diego. San Diego is home to the Navy's rapid capability organizations, and our software is already in use there. This is an in-person role. You will spend most of your week on site with users and working on government networks.

Your job is to find the mission problems that matter most, break them into specific hypotheses, and prove those hypotheses out in our products. Much of that is configuration: building agent workflows, prompts, databases, reports, and alerts on our classified platform, then iterating with users until they hold up in real operations. Some of it is net-new capability that you will scope with our engineers and deliver alongside them.

You will often own a funded prototype end to end. That means running discovery with operators, building the sprint plan with engineering, configuring and testing on the high side, demoing to program leadership, and shaping what the follow-on should be. When you see the next problem worth solving, you will write it up clearly enough that we can decide whether to go after it.

This is not a traditional customer success, solutions, or product role. Some of the work is gritty. Configurations can take hours and many iterations to get right, and problems are often unclear and changing. You will partner closely with our Mission Leads, who own customer relationships and the path to programs of record, and with the engineers building the platform. You will have support from product, engineering, and leadership, but you will decide where to focus and how to maximize mission impact.

U.S. Persons status with at least a current Secret US DoD or IC clearance is required. This is a customer-facing role required to be based in San Diego. Work will require time in secure or classified environments and periodic travel.

What you'll do

• Embed with users on watch floors, at schoolhouses, and during fleet exercises. Learn their workflows well enough to see the manual work they've stopped noticing.
• Turn ambiguous problems into hypotheses you can test in days, and adjust as you learn.
• Configure and prove workflows. Write and tune the prompts, agent workflows, databases, reports, and dashboards that turn a mission problem into a working tool, then validate them against real tasks with real users.
• Test and troubleshoot releases on classified networks, and give engineering specific, reproducible feedback.
• Run funded prototypes from discovery through final demo, including sprint planning, tracking government dependencies, and reporting status to customers and leadership.
• Build demos and concepts quickly to show new user groups what's possible, and get them excited about it.
• Partner with Mission Leads and business development on scoping, cost estimates, and follow-on work

What we're looking for

• An active Secret clearance at minimum. TS/SCI preferred.
• Based in San Diego or willing to relocate. This role is in person.
• Experience using technology to solve hard operational problems, either from building products (product management, engineering) or from fielding new technology in the military.
• A track record of creatively scoping ambiguous problems and generating strong hypotheses when the path isn't clear.
• Comfort with hands-on technical work. You will rewrite a prompt ten times, dig into why a configuration isn't behaving, and keep going until it works.
• Curiosity about agentic AI and how to apply it to real workflows.
• High ownership. You take responsibility for outcomes and operate independently.
• Clear writing. You can turn a messy week on site into a short update that engineers and leadership can act on.
• Professional presence with operators and senior leaders alike

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.

What we offer

We're proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

• 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

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.