{"id":3059063,"url":"https://alion.io/job/skywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer","title":"Principal Defence Systems Engineer","company":{"id":178006,"name":"SkyWatch","domain":"skywatch.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/skywatch-2","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Defense","role_family":"Defense","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Ottawa, Canada"],"countries":["CA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":77000,"max_usd":173000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":19},"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"NIST 800-53","optional":false},{"name":"STANAG","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-30T15:06:10Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-30","last_verified_at":"2026-10-27T03:56:41Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":26,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":26},"description":"Company Description:\nSkyWatch is at the forefront of revolutionizing how earth observation data is accessed and utilized globally. Our innovative platform empowers businesses, researchers, and governments to easily integrate satellite data into their operations, driving informed decision-making and unlocking new opportunities for growth and efficiency. Founded on the principle of democratizing access to space-based technology, SkyWatch provides a seamless interface that aggregates data from numerous satellite sources, offering unparalleled access and insights. Whether monitoring agriculture, managing infrastructure, or advancing scientific research, our scalable solutions cater to diverse industries with a commitment to reliability, security, and sustainability.\nOur Products:\nOur suite of applications is tailored to meet the diverse needs of users on the SkyWatch platform. Whether you are an individual purchasing data for a project, a business seeking to store and share geospatial data, a GIS specialist in need of imagery for maps or workflows, a developer looking to build innovative solutions with our API, or a data provider seeking to sell to our user network, you can do it with SkyWatch.\nOur Culture:\nCulture is the personality of a company. It is our company's shared beliefs, values, and practices. At SkyWatch, our culture is incredibly important to us, and we practice it every day. Both as a company and in our products, we value simplicity, dependability, and empathy. Let’s face it - the best jobs boil down to a handful of things: getting the chance to work with amazing people in a great culture with leaders who have your back while pursuing a vision that you can get passionate about.\nPlease note that SkyWatch may use AI throughout various portions of the talent process.\nThe mission\nBuild and lead the team that puts SkyWatch's platform inside Canada's sovereign and defence environments.\nWe are opening an Ottawa engineering team to deliver a sovereign version of our platform: deployable in private cloud, on premises and air-gapped, accredited for government use, interoperable with defence systems, and carrying our AI agents inside the security boundary. You are its first hire and its technical owner.\nThe role\nYou own the architecture of the sovereign product line and the roadmap and delivery of the Government & Defence engineering team. You build the team from the ground up, about six engineers and two continuously staffed co-op seats over 2027, and you are the technical acceptance authority at each delivery milestone.\nReporting to the CEO, you have real say over what gets built and how. That means your calls have to be good for the customer and good for SkyWatch, and what you ship has to be a pleasure to use, even inside the security boundary.\nThis is a founding role. You will design the system, hire the people who build it and sit across the table from government technical authorities, often in the same week.\nKey responsibilities\nOwn the sovereign architecture. Deployment architecture for private-cloud, on-premises and air-gapped environments; data segregation and secure multi-tenant distribution; security design end to end.\n\nLead accreditation. Own the technical evidence for security assessment and authorization, including ITSG-33 controls at Protected B, with audit and logging built in rather than bolted on.\n\nHold a very high bar for user experience. Analysts and operators use this under time pressure, often disconnected, with security in the way. Make it simple, fast and obvious anyway. Security is never an excuse for a clumsy product.\n\nDeliver interoperability. Tactical dissemination and defence data standards (NITF/NSIF, SIDD, GeoPackage, STANAG 4559), and integration with common operating picture, GIS and TAK environments.\n\nBring AI inside the boundary. Agent workflows over sovereign data with trace retention for audit, human-in-the-loop analyst workflows, and evaluation of answer quality and latency.\n\nRun roadmap and delivery. Own the roadmap and SDLC for Government & Defence against our product direction, and act as technical acceptance authority at each milestone gate.\n\nMake calls that are good for the customer and for SkyWatch. Know what a sovereign deployment costs to build, accredit and support, and build it once for many customers rather than once per contract wherever you can.\n\nBuild and lead the team. Hire, lead and grow the Ottawa engineers, and run a co-op mentorship programme with local universities.\n\nOwn the government support surface. The support agent, its user experience and its knowledge corpus inside the sovereign access boundary.\n\nWho you are\nA systems architect for constrained environments. You have shipped software that runs where the internet does not reach and where security is audited.\n\nFluent in defence customers. You understand how Canadian defence and government technical authorities evaluate, accept and accredit systems.\n\nGreat taste. You care how a system feels to the analyst or operator using it, not just whether it passes accreditation, and you notice when something is almost right.\n\nCommercially minded. You understand how government programmes are bought and what they cost us to deliver, and you make trade-offs a CEO would recognise. It needn’t be your strongest suit, but you want to grow it.\n\nA team builder. You have hired and led engineers, and you want to build a team rather than join one.\n\nAI-first by habit. You build with LLMs and agents and you know how to make them auditable.\n\nQualifications\n10+ years building production software, including 3+ years as a principal, architect or technical lead on secure or defence systems.\n\nHands-on experience with on-premises, private-cloud or air-gapped deployment, and with security assessment and authorization (ITSG-33, NIST 800-53 or equivalent).\n\nExperience leading an engineering team through milestone-based delivery to a government customer.\n\nSoftware you shaped for analysts or operators that set a high bar for usability, and that you can walk us through at an unclassified level.\n\nExperience making build decisions with a business trade-off, such as cost to deliver, reuse across customers or time to market.\n\nCanadian citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a Government of Canada security clearance (Secret or higher).\n\nExperience with geospatial, imagery or ISR data and defence interoperability standards. Strongly preferred\n\nExperience deploying LLM or agent systems in regulated environments. Preferred\n\nCompensation\nBase salary plus stock options. Health benefits and on-site or hybrid work from Ottawa. Indicative base salary: CA$200,000 to CA$240,000, depending on experience and clearance.\nWhy SkyWatch\nA founding role. Design the system and hire the team, with a direct line to the CEO.\n\nMission. Sovereign access to Earth observation data for Canada and its allies.\n\nThe frontier. AI agents operating on satellite, aerial and drone data inside the security boundary.\n\nAccessibility at SkyWatch\nAt SkyWatch, we believe every candidate deserves a fair and inclusive experience. If you require an accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know - we're happy to work with you to ensure your needs are met.\nTo request an accommodation, please advise any member of the talent team or contact us at .","description_format":"text","description_chars":7371,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work","Stock options"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Canada","iso":"CA","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Earth Observation","Geospatial AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-22T05:31:45Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":56,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.748,"p_room":0.75,"age_days":26,"expected_fill_days":27,"reasons":["conf:1","win:late"],"computed_at":"2026-10-27T05:46:45Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/skywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/skywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-27T06:03:45Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":6067,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-28T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":178006},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=178006"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fskywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fskywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fskywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/skywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fskywatch-principal-defence-systems-engineer"}]}