Mission Lead - Minneapolis (Clearance Required)

Vannevar•Minneapolis, MN

12d•Onsite

About The Position

Vannevar is a defense technology company building AI to deter adversaries. This role involves embedding directly with Department of War (DOW) customers across the United States to deploy software against challenging problems. The Mission Lead will work alongside engineers and other mission leads, sitting onsite with uniformed service members and civilian operators. The primary goal is to earn trust by creating value, understanding user needs, decomposing problems into mission hypotheses, testing these hypotheses through product workflows, and onboarding users. This is not a traditional customer success, solutions, or product role, but rather focused on solving complex and ambiguous problems by configuring product workflows, testing and troubleshooting releases, triaging issues, and collaborating with product and engineering teams. The work can be gritty, involving hours of configuration and iteration, but offers the reward of directly shaping outcomes for users. The Mission Lead will also cultivate relationships with new user groups, generate wins, and translate these into stories that support Vannevar's deployments. This role requires operating independently on site, with support from various teams, and making decisions to maximize mission impact. It is a customer-facing role requiring frequent travel and time in secure or classified environments.

Requirements

Active TS clearance.
This role is based in Minnesota, and includes about 75% time travel out-of-state to sit side-by-side with users across the United States.
Comfort in the field: ability to build trust with users in operational environments.
High ownership: taking responsibility for outcomes and operating independently.
Grit and persistence: ability to work through ambiguity, iteration, and friction to achieve impact.
Strong mission judgment: ability to identify which user problems matter and where product can create value.
Technical intuition: ability to reason about how software systems work, break, and how to improve them, creating real value for users.
Curiosity about agentic AI: excitement to understand, configure, and apply AI-enabled systems to create mission impact for the warfighter.
Professional presence: ability to show up in high-stakes government environments as a trusted technical partner.

Responsibilities

Embed with users and sit on site with DOW customer groups to build deep intuition for their mission.
Build trust and earn credibility by understanding user problems and helping solve them.
Turn ambiguity into hypotheses by breaking complex mission problems into specific workflows that can be tested.
Configure product workflows to set up high-value workflows for users through creative, iterative configuration.
Test and troubleshoot releases, debug product issues on deployed DOW systems, and work with engineering to resolve them.
Generate mission wins by identifying what works, onboarding users, and translating wins into evidence of impact.
Develop new user groups by building relationships with additional teams on site and identifying where Vannevar can create value.
Operate independently by setting priorities on site and pushing work through without waiting for perfect direction.
Represent Vannevar by being the face of the company with DOW users and customers.