Mission Lead - Minneapolis (Clearance Required)

Vannevar•Minneapolis, MN

5h•Hybrid

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 as part of a mission-focused team, sitting alongside uniformed service members and civilian operators. The primary goal is to earn trust by creating value: understanding user goals, decomposing problems, testing hypotheses through product workflows, and onboarding users. This is not a traditional customer success, solutions, or product role; it focuses on solving complex and ambiguous problems by configuring product workflows, testing releases, triaging issues, and collaborating with product and engineering. The role requires operating independently on site, deciding where to focus, and maximizing mission impact. The position is customer-facing and requires frequent travel, with a commitment to hiring locally. U.S. Persons status with at least a current Top Secret clearance is required. Work will involve time in secure or classified environments and periodic travel.

Requirements

Active TS clearance.
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.
Curiosity about agentic AI; excitement to understand, configure, and apply AI-enabled systems.
Professional presence; ability to show up in high-stakes government environments as a trusted technical partner.

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

Embed with users and sit on site with DOW customer groups to build deep intuition for their mission.
Build trust by understanding user problems and helping solve them over time.
Turn ambiguity into hypotheses by breaking complex mission problems into specific workflows that can be tested.
Configure product workflows, setting up high-value workflows for users through creative, iterative configuration.
Test and troubleshoot 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 on site, setting priorities and pushing work through without waiting for perfect direction.
Represent Vannevar as the face of the company with DOW users and customers.