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.
Vannevar is building the future of national security enablement with agentic AI. Our platform tightens the loop from observation to action by giving warfighters cutting-edge analysis tools to make better decisions, faster.
We’re looking for a talented Software Engineering Manager to lead our Mission Agents engineering team. This team builds the agent-powered mission console, product surfaces, and workflow infrastructure that enable mission owners in the defense and national security space to leverage AI agents to drive real operational outcomes.
Your team will partner closely with customers, mission owners, designers, product leaders, and engineers to build lasting products where users are meaningfully enabled by AI. You’ll be responsible for leading the team that designs, ships, and scales full-stack agentic workflows.
This role is ideal for a product-minded engineering leader who can combine strong management fundamentals with deep technical judgment around AI-native product development. You’ll help the team move quickly, iterate with users, and build pragmatic, high-impact agentic systems for national security missions.
What You’ll Do- Product engineering: Lead the Mission Agents team in designing, building, and shipping a cutting-edge agent-powered mission console using TypeScript, React, Tailwind, Node.js, Python, Postgres, and AWS.
- Agent leadership: Guide the implementation and scaling of robust agentic workflows that enable missions at scale, using modern agent frameworks and patterns.
- 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 worlflows.
- AI-native product strategy: Help define and shape how users are enabled by AI and agents at Vannevar, balancing ambitious product vision with reliable execution.
- 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, agentic software.
- 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.
- Familiarity with agentic AI products and workflows, including frameworks such as LangGraph, Agno, Pydantic AI, or similar 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
- PostgreSQL, or other relational databases.
- Software development in AWS or other cloud services.
- Willingness to travel to offsites, team syncs, and customer sites.
- U.S. Citizenship, required to access U.S.-only data systems.
- Active security clearance or ability/willingness to obtain one.
- Prior experience building software for defense, national security or intelligence use cases.
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- 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
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.
Skills Required
- 3+ years of experience leading and building software engineering teams
- 8+ years of professional software development experience
- Familiarity with agentic AI products and workflows
- Strong product instincts and experience with user engagement
- Proficiency in Python, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and AWS
- U.S. Citizenship required
What the Team is Saying
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Vannevar Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Employer-verified health, dental, vision, and mental-health coverage are consistently listed, indicating comprehensive medical support. Additional wellness resources and stipends reinforce access to preventive and mental healthcare.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with company match is highlighted alongside long-term ownership programs such as equity and an ESPP, signaling strong retirement and savings support. Public profiles characterize the match as generous, complementing core benefits.
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Parental & Family Support — Fully paid parental leave, fertility and family-planning assistance, childcare benefits, and caregiving stipends during work travel indicate strong support for families. These offerings appear repeatedly across recent postings and benefit summaries.
Vannevar Insights
What We Do
Vannevar combines Silicon Valley innovation with former special operators to build AI for real-world national security outcomes. Since our founding in 2019, Vannevar has deployed its technology across 125 missions, safeguarding our service members and improving our country's deterrence. We believe our military service members and intelligence officers deserve access to the best technology American innovation can offer, and we are mobilizing frontier technology for this mission. Our founders have 30 years of combined experience across AI labs, national security strategy, intelligence agencies and special operations. We're supported by a number of leading VCs, including Felicis, DFJ Growth, Point72, Costanoa, and General Catalyst. Vannevar is one of the most capital efficient defense tech companies, reaching early profitability and becoming a defense tech unicorn in 2024.
Why Work With Us
We pride ourselves on being a team of passionate, low-ego professionals who share a commitment to engineering excellence and a genuine concern for the people and AI agents we deliver. Vannevar is a company that truly cares about its people and one of our core principles is "put your wellbeing first".
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Vannevar Offices
Remote Workspace
Employees work remotely.
We are distributed across the map, but united by the mission. We go where the mission takes us and deliver where others can’t. Honolulu, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington D.C., New York. You decide what's next.
