Mission Architect

Responsibilities

• Translate complex user workflows, decision points, and constraints into clear requirements and user stories that engineering can build from.
• Partner with the Product Manager to shape PRDs, refine scope, and ensure roadmap items reflect real user needs.
• Define and refine acceptance criteria so delivered work is validated against operational reality, not just technical correctness.
• Run the product through realistic end-to-end scenarios and surface usability issues, workflow gaps, and edge cases early.
• Review features before release and confirm they behave correctly in the way users actually work.
• Design evaluation scenarios, scoring approaches, and benchmark workflows that measure real user impact.
• Shape workflows, information architecture, and interface behavior so the product feels native to the domain.
• Serve as the product team’s primary domain expert, helping engineers, designers, and researchers make better decisions faster.
• Support customer conversations and demonstrations, translating product capabilities into language that resonates with practitioners and leadership.
• Surface emerging user needs, new use cases, and deployment opportunities that inform future product direction.

Requirements (Must Have)

• 7+ years of hands-on experience as a practitioner in the product’s target domain, such as cyber operations, intelligence analysis, capability acquisition, or a comparable field.
• Strong credibility with practitioners in that domain and a track record of trusted judgment in high-stakes work.
• Experience translating complex operational workflows into structured product requirements, user stories, or other build-ready documentation.
• Helped shape user-facing tools, workflows, or interfaces used in real operational environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills across technical, operational, and executive audiences.
• Experience working cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and related teams.
• Strong judgment for defining acceptance criteria and evaluating whether a feature truly meets user needs.

Nice To Have

• Transitioned from a practitioner role into product development, requirements engineering, or capability development.
• Worked with AI/ML-powered products, including agentic systems, LLM-based workflows, or knowledge graph applications.
• Experience in evaluation design, operational test and evaluation, or scenario-based product assessment.
• Created training content, reference materials, or doctrine for operational users.
• Influenced product direction at a software company serving government or defense customers.

Tech Environment

• AI/ML-powered product experiences, including LLM-driven and agentic workflows.
• Knowledge graph applications and products built around complex data relationships.
• Evaluation tooling, scenario libraries, scoring rubrics, and acceptance benchmark frameworks.
• Modern product and engineering teams shipping user-facing software for operational environments.