Vannevar is a defense technology company building AI to deter our adversaries. In the 21st century, conflict moves at algorithmic speed and foresight equals firepower. Our agentic AI is purpose-built to compete with China—from cross-Strait conflict to gray zone coercion. Trained on the most mission-relevant datasets in defense, our technology models adversary behavior, simulates campaigns, and recommends the best course of action to decision makers. Our AI systems are some of the most trusted in the industry and actively used on the front lines of the Indo-Pacific to keep the peace and save lives.
Exceptional technology starts with exceptional people. Vannevar is a small agile team combining world-class engineers with veteran strategists who bring deep expertise in defense and tradecraft. We’re building a company defined by mission impact, user empathy, and disciplined growth. In just three years, we grew from $3M to $80M in ARR, achieved early profitability, and reached unicorn status—proving that disruption doesn’t require an ego, and staying power doesn’t mean standing still.
About the role
Vannevar builds new defense capabilities for 21st-century conflict. Our software delivers information dominance and decision advantage—improving targeting, accelerating planning, and strengthening both homeland defense and Indo-Pacific deterrence.
We’re looking for a talented Software Engineering Manager to lead our Decision Advantage engineering team. This team builds mission-critical intelligence and decision support capabilities to help our partners maintain strategic advantage.
Your team will partner closely with customers, mission owners, designers, product leaders, and engineers to build lasting products enabling a wide range of capabilities, including analysis of the information environment, perception assessment and management capabilities, hyper-localized sentiment analysis, and tracking strategic indicators and warnings.
This role is ideal for a product-minded engineering leader who can combine strong management fundamentals with deep technical judgment. You’ll help the team move quickly, iterate with users, and build pragmatic, high-impact products for national security missions.
What you’ll do
- Product engineering: Lead the Decision Advantage team in designing, building, and shipping cutting-edge applications, services, and agents using TypeScript, React, Tailwind, Node.js, Python, Postgres, and AWS.
- Customer and mission partnership: Partner with customers, mission owners, designers, and product teams to understand user workflows and drive concrete outcomes aligned with real-world operator workflows.
- Developer and team acceleration: Reduce friction and duplication across the team by building strong technical patterns, reusable services, and clear product engineering practices.
- Team leadership: Grow and mentor a high-performing team of full-stack engineers. Foster a strong engineering culture focused on pragmatism, velocity, ownership, and mission impact.
- Cross-functional execution: Collaborate with Design, Platform, and Product teams to deliver durable, reliable software.
What we look for
- 3+ years of experience leading and building software engineering teams, ideally in product engineering, AI/ML, or related domains.
- 8+ years of professional software development experience, with strong technical judgment across full-stack systems.
- Strong product instincts and prior experience working directly with users, customers, or mission owners to understand workflows, collect feedback, and ship better solutions.
- Ability to lead teams through ambiguity, balancing speed, reliability, security, and mission impact.
- Track record of data-driven decision making - argue with metrics, not gut feelings.
- Excellent communication skills, cross-functional leadership, and project ownership.
- Proficiency with:
- Coding in Python, TypeScript, or similar
- Postgres, or other relational databases.
- Software development in AWS or other cloud services.
- Willingness to travel to off-sites, team syncs, and customer sites.
- U.S. Citizenship, required to access U.S.-only data systems.
Nice to have
- Active security clearance or ability/willingness to obtain one.
- Prior experience building software for defense, national security, or intelligence use cases.
Competitive Salary
The salary range for this position is $200,000 - $260,000 + equity. Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.
What We Offer
We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Remote friendly with WeWork access
- Unlimited PTO, shared downtime during the federal holiday calendar, and company-wide off time at the end of each year
- 401(k) match
- Lifestyle & wellbeing stipends
- Salary top-up during military reserve duty
- Fully paid parental leave
- Child and pet care reimbursement during travel
Vannevar is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.
We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you!
IMPORTANT NOTICE
We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.
