Sr. Manager, Mission Engineering & Operations

Axon•Columbia, SC

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

Join Axon and be a Force for Good. At Axon, we’re on a mission to Protect Life. We’re explorers, pursuing society’s most critical safety and justice issues with our ecosystem of devices and cloud software. Like our products, we work better together. We connect with candor and care, seeking out diverse perspectives from our customers, communities and each other. Life at Axon is fast-paced, challenging and meaningful. Here, you’ll take ownership and drive real change. Constantly grow as you work hard for a mission that matters at a company where you matter. Your Impact You will lead a team of Mission Engineers who serve as Axon’s embedded builders and operational partners inside strategic public safety agencies. Mission Engineers work face-to-face with the people doing the work, diagnose how the agency operates, and build the workflows, automations, integrations, and AI-enabled solutions that measurably improve it. As Senior Manager, you will create the environment in which that work succeeds. You will coach experienced individual contributors, set a clear bar for technical delivery and agency partnership, and help the team turn ambiguous field problems into secure, maintainable solutions that reach production and earn sustained adoption. You will stay close enough to the portfolio to recognize patterns, anticipate risk, and connect what the team learns in the field back to Product, Engineering, and the broader organization. Success is reflected in agencies becoming more capable, Mission Engineers growing into trusted transformation leaders, and strong field solutions becoming reusable patterns that benefit customers beyond a single engagement. Axon’s mission is to Protect Life, and this team is one of the most direct ways we advance that mission alongside the agencies we serve.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in customer-facing technical delivery, systems integration, solutions engineering, implementation consulting, operational transformation, or comparable environments
5+ years leading and developing senior technical individual contributors in customer-facing organizations
Demonstrated success coaching teams that deliver secure, production-ready solutions in complex customer environments
Experience leading distributed or field-based teams across multiple customers, regions, or engagement models
A record of improving technical execution, adoption, operational outcomes, and delivery consistency across a portfolio
Broad technical fluency across SaaS platforms, cloud services, APIs, networking, hardware, integrations, data workflows, and AI-enabled technologies
Executive presence with the ability to earn trust, communicate trade-offs, and guide decisions with command staff and senior leaders
Strong systems thinking and the ability to distinguish isolated issues from patterns that require a scalable solution
A data-informed leadership approach using baselines, production delivery, adoption, operational improvement, quality, and reuse to evaluate performance
Comfort leading through ambiguity while creating clarity around ownership, priorities, and success criteria
Ability to obtain and maintain CJIS compliance and exercise sound judgment with highly sensitive information

Nice To Haves

Experience in public safety, law enforcement, defense, government technology, or another mission-critical operating environment
Familiarity with CAD, RMS, digital evidence, real-time operations, or integrated public safety ecosystems
Experience leading teams that build automations, integrations, operational workflows, internal tools, or AI-enabled solutions
Experience converting field-developed solutions into reusable frameworks, product improvements, or organizational playbooks
Familiarity with technical talent development, competency frameworks, or academy-style enablement programs

Responsibilities

Lead, Coach, and Develop Mission Engineers: Lead and develop a distributed team of embedded Mission Engineers working across strategic agency environments. Coach individual contributors through complex technical decisions, ambiguous customer problems, executive conversations, and high-stakes delivery moments. Establish clear expectations for ownership, technical quality, onsite partnership, production delivery, adoption, documentation, and measurable agency impact. Build individualized development plans and create opportunities for Mission Engineers to expand their technical range, executive presence, and transformation leadership. Foster a culture of curiosity, candor, responsible experimentation, continuous learning, and shared accountability. Support thoughtful team growth by selecting and onboarding people who can both build practical solutions and earn credibility with agency stakeholders.
Set the Bar for Agency Outcomes: Ensure Mission Engineers begin with the agency’s mission, operational workflow, and desired outcome before selecting or building a solution. Require clear baselines, success criteria, and adoption measures so impact is demonstrated rather than assumed. Guide the team from discovery through production use, iteration, handoff, and sustained adoption. Help Mission Engineers balance immediate agency needs with secure, maintainable, and scalable solution design. Reinforce that success means the agency is more capable—not that one individual has become indispensable.
Own a Strategic Mission Engineering Portfolio: Maintain visibility across strategic agencies, active builds, adoption progress, technical risk, and emerging operational needs. Match Mission Engineer capability and level to agency complexity, transformation opportunity, and stakeholder environment. Use operating reviews and portfolio data to identify delivery risks, recurring friction, adoption barriers, and opportunities for reuse. Step into critical situations with structure and calm while coaching the accountable Mission Engineer to remain in ownership. Drive consistent execution across embedded engagements without forcing every agency problem into the same playbook.
Advance Technical and AI-Enabled Delivery: Maintain sufficient fluency across SaaS, cloud services, APIs, enterprise integrations, hardware, data, and modern AI tooling to coach technical decisions and challenge weak reasoning. Help the team decide when to configure the platform, when to extend it, and when a net-new build is justified. Establish expectations for validation, observability, fallback paths, maintainability, documentation, and responsible use of sensitive data. Ensure solutions uphold CJIS requirements, evidence integrity, privacy, approved-tooling standards, and other applicable security controls. Encourage practical use of AI to accelerate work while preserving human ownership of architecture, accuracy, and outcomes.
Turn Field Learning Into Organizational Leverage: Build mechanisms for Mission Engineers to document and share reusable workflows, integrations, frameworks, and playbooks. Identify patterns across agencies and help convert successful one-off solutions into repeatable capabilities. Create strong feedback loops with Product and Engineering around recurring workflow friction, unmet operational needs, and product opportunities. Partner with Mission Operators, Customer Success, Deployment, Professional Services, Support, Sales, Product, Engineering, and Enablement so agencies experience coordinated execution. Share portfolio insights with senior leaders to influence investment, prioritization, staffing, and the evolution of the Mission Engineering operating model.
Lead Executive and Agency Engagement: Build trusted relationships with command staff, agency executives, technical leaders, and internal senior leadership. Serve as a senior partner during agency-impacting incidents, high-visibility deployments, and moments that require clear trade-offs or executive alignment. Translate complex technical and operational issues into decisions that are clear to both technical teams and executive audiences. Coach Mission Engineers to challenge requests constructively, communicate candidly, and leave stakeholders with a practical path forward.