Forward Deployed Mission Strategist, Navy

Forward Deployed Mission Strategist, Navy
Company: Venture-backed defense AI software company (name disclosed upon mutual interest)
Location: San Diego, California. In person, on site with Navy users most of the week.
Role Type: Full-Time Employee
Clearance: U.S. Person with an active Secret clearance at minimum (TS/SCI preferred)
Compensation: $165,000–$185,000 base, plus equity
About the Client
Our client builds AI-enabled software for high-stakes U.S. military and national security missions. Its software is already in operational use across the armed services, and its people (engineers and product leaders included) work forward, side by side with the units that own the mission, rather than building from a distance.
About the Role
This is a forward-deployed role embedded with Navy users in San Diego, where the company's software is already in use. Most of your week will be spent at user sites and working on government networks.
You will pinpoint the operational problems with the biggest payoff, frame them as hypotheses, and prove them in the product. A large share of the work is hands-on setup: designing AI agent workflows, prompts, databases, reports, and alerts on a classified platform, then refining them alongside users until they are dependable in live operations. The rest is new capability that you will scope and deliver together with the engineering team.
It is common for you to lead a funded prototype from start to finish: operator discovery, sprint planning with engineers, building and testing on classified systems, demos for program leadership, and shaping what comes next.
This is not a typical customer success, solutions, or product job. Some of the work is gritty, configurations can take many iterations, and problems are often unclear and shifting. You will work hand in hand with the Mission Leads, who manage the customer relationship and the route to a program of record, and with the platform engineers. Help is always available, but the call on where to focus is yours.
Responsibilities
Spend time with sailors and civilians in operations centers, training commands, and fleet exercises, getting to know their day-to-day work closely enough to see the manual effort they have learned to live with.
Frame fuzzy problems as quick experiments that can be checked within days, and change course as the results come in.
Build and refine the prompts, AI agent workflows, data stores, reports, and dashboards that turn an operational problem into a usable tool, and confirm they work for real users doing real tasks.
Check new releases on classified systems, find what breaks, and hand engineers clear, repeatable bug reports.
Lead funded prototypes from the first discovery session to the closing demo, including sprint plans, government dependencies, and progress updates.
Put together fast demos and concepts that get new user groups excited about what the software can do.
Work with the Mission Leads and business development team on scope, pricing estimates, and the next phase of work.
Requirements
Must-Haves
Active Secret clearance at minimum (TS/SCI preferred) and U.S. Person status.
Living in the San Diego area, or open to moving there. The job is on site.
A background applying technology to tough operational challenges, whether as a product manager or engineer, or by bringing new tech into service in the military.
A history of making sense of open-ended problems and coming up with sharp hypotheses when there is no clear path.
Comfort with hands-on technical work: rewriting a prompt ten times and digging into why a configuration misbehaves until it works.
Genuine interest in agentic AI and putting it to work on practical problems.
A strong sense of ownership and the ability to work on your own.
Crisp writing, and the presence to work comfortably with both operators and senior officers.
Nice-to-Haves
A Navy background, particularly in ISR, targeting, maritime ops, or unmanned systems.
Experience standing watch or working in an operations center.
Hands-on work with LLM tools, or some basic scripting.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary is $165,000 to $185,000, plus equity.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance
401(k) match
Unlimited PTO
Fully paid parental leave
Wellness and lifestyle stipends
Pay support during military reserve duty