Deployment Strategist
On-siteDayton, Ohio, United States
Job Summary
Own the end-to-end outcome of a customer program by defining success criteria, prioritizing problems to solve, and setting milestones that prove value. Embed with government and industry customers to understand their mission, constraints, and politics, building relationships from end users to program executives that ensure deployment durability. Serve as the named Program Manager on major federal programs, carrying the program narrative through status reports, technical interchange meetings, and formal review boards while standing accountable for every contract commitment. Set direction and priorities for a small Forward Deployed Engineering team without intermediating between engineers and users, protecting their time from non-work activities. Own the growth thesis, shaping option years, follow-ons, and expansions directly from delivered outcomes, and feed field insights back into product and engineering to improve the platform for all customers. Work day-to-day at or travel to customer sites, test events, hackathons, and program milestones, typically domestic.
Required Qualifications
- A track record of owning an outcome with no formal authority over the people delivering it
- Insider fluency in the customer domain
- Domain: air platform development and the lifecycle behind it
- Technical conversancy across modeling and simulation, MBSE, digital threads, software development, and/or agentic design
- Product sense
- The range to brief a program executive in the morning and pair with an engineer in the afternoon
- An instinct for reading rooms and organizational dynamics
- Comfort operating with incomplete information and shifting requirements
- The initiative to define next steps without being told
- Eligibility to obtain and hold a U.S. security clearance
Desired Qualifications
- Highly desired: Experience in a forward deployed, deployment strategist, or field delivery role at a technology or defense company
- A prior key personnel Program Manager designation on a DoD or NASA contract, or time inside a government program office, uniformed or civilian
- Working familiarity with government contracting mechanics: deliverable cadences, milestone reviews, option years, and what a contracting officer cares about
- A track record of converting delivery into growth: an option year exercised, an expansion won, a pilot that became a program of record
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