The Role

We are looking for a leader to open our fourth vertical, defense and national security, with a dual mandate: to sell our partners’ software to defense and national security customers, and to build with us the thesis and business model of Echelon Defense Industries, which takes Echelon beyond software.

A Dual Mandate

Reporting to the Chief Revenue Officer, you carry two mandates at once. You open the vertical commercially: the relationships, the needs and the first deals for our partners’ software, Applied Intuition first, with credibility earned through early, concrete results. And with the leadership, you build the thesis and business model of Echelon Defense Industries: how defense technology is shifting, where Echelon should play beyond software (in hardware, manufacturing and the industrial partnerships they need), and the path to a first contract. Each mandate feeds the other: what you learn with customers shapes the thesis, and the thesis shapes what we bring to market.

Sell partner software

Build the pipeline. Relationships with defense and national security entities, their needs mapped before anything is proposed, a qualified pipeline and the first deals for our partners’ software.

Position partner software. Applied Intuition’s software and other partners’ technology on concrete defense use cases, with a deliberate choice of the applications we lead with, alongside the partners and our deployment teams.

Work with partners and advisors. Partners and any advisor we engage, each with a clear brief, and agreements such as MOUs turned into progress.

Plan each account. A plan for each defense account, built with the CRO’s team and the deployment strategists.

Build the Echelon Defense Industries thesis

Read the technology shift. Continuous intelligence on how defense technology is changing (autonomy across air, maritime and ground, counter-drone, AI-enabled command and control) and what it means for the threats customers face and the capabilities they will buy.

Choose where to play. The applications Echelon Defense Industries focuses on, from intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to interception, tested against customer needs and our partners’ roadmaps.

Build the business model. The model beyond software, with the leadership: the IP position (develop, co-own or acquire), partners for parts and manufacturing, economics, plan and the path to a first contract.

Set the governance. Defense procurement and export-control rules respected on every engagement, with Legal and Compliance, and partners from different jurisdictions kept strictly separate where their rules require it.

Build the team. The team of Echelon Defense Industries and of the vertical, built as the business grows: recruited through your network and developed in role.

Where we align

Defense record. You bring a deep record in defense and national security, ideally from both sides: as an end user in the armed forces or government, and in industry or a defense technology company.

Software and industry. You understand both what software brings to defense and what it takes to build and manufacture hardware.

Commercial drive. You open doors, qualify opportunities and close.

Structured thinker. You read where defense technology is going and turn it into a thesis and a business model others can test and decide on.

Trusted. You handle sensitive matters with discretion and judgment.

Builder from zero. You have built a team, a programme or a business from nothing and taken it to working order.

Talent attractor. Strong people want to work with you, and you inspire the next generation to join.

Strong advantage

Defense technology. Experience with autonomous and uncrewed systems, AI-enabled command and control or simulation.

Procurement. Experience of defense procurement, offsets, localisation programmes and export-control regimes.

Arabic. Professional fluency in Arabic.

Ecosystem standing. Established relationships with defense authorities, the armed forces and defense industry.

Our values

Customer first. You measure your work by customer outcomes, and prioritise accordingly.