Deployment Strategist

About Istari Istari Digital builds the connective tissue for defense acquisition. Our platform lets engineering models, simulations, and digital threads move securely across primes, suppliers, and government program offices, so a system can be tested, trusted, and fielded in months rather than years. We work at the center of some of the hardest problems in defense acquisition: getting the right model, to the right person, at the right classification, at the right time. We are a small, senior team, and every hire changes what the company can do next. The role: A Deployment Strategist at Istari is the single accountable owner of a customer program's outcome. You will embed with a small team of forward deployed engineers on one flagship program, or a small set of lighter engagements, and you will decide what matters: which problems the team attacks and in what order, what each demonstration, technical interchange, or test event has to prove, and how the deployment becomes something the customer cannot imagine operating without. Some days that means a working session with a prime's chief engineer. Other days it means briefing a program executive on why a digital thread changes their schedule risk, or reading the room after a review board and knowing exactly which conversation needs to happen next. On our largest federal programs, you also carry the formal Program Manager design [... source excerpt omitted ...] e program becomes next, not to the tracker. You are not the primary builder here; we hire Forward Deployed Engineers for that, and your job is never to stand between them and the customer. You do need enough technical range that engineers trust your judgment and customers trust your answers. There is no fixed path into this role and no single background that produces a great Deployment Strategist. We are looking for people who would rather own the result than the process, and the more ownership you take, the more you will be given. What you'll do Own the outcome of a program end to end: define what success means, choose the problems worth solving and the order to solve them in [... source excerpt omitted ...] rs, and protect their time from everything that is not the work. Own the growth thesis: option years, follow-ons, and expansions grow out of delivered outcomes, and they are your responsibility to shape from inside the relationship. Feed what you learn in the field back into product and engineering, so the platform gets better for every customer, not just the one in front of you. Work day-to-day at or travel to customer sites, test events, hackathons, and program milestones as needed, typically domestic. Qualifications / Who thrives in this role We hire for judgment, curiosity, and a bias toward action more than for a specific degree or years of experience. That said, people who