Engineering Manager, Mission Agents

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 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. 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. 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 wor