Industry Strategy Lead - Aerospace and Defence

About CoLab

At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.
We build AI for engineers designing cars, medical devices, and jet engines. Products this complex aren't sketched and sent to production. Teams spend months on iterations, reviews, and tests, predicting how every part performs before anything is built. CoLab is where those reviews happen, and we capture the rationale behind every change. Other tools show what changed between versions. Only CoLab knows why. That's how our AI helps manufacturers like Bobcat, Triumph Motorcycles, and GE Appliances make better decisions, eliminate rework cycles, and get to market faster.

Proudly based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, CoLab started with one customer in 2018. Since then we’ve raised a $72M Series C, been named the 57th fastest growing company in North America by Deloitte (Fast 500™), signed multi-year AI partnerships with companies like Bombardier, and grown to a team of 250+.

About The Role

This is a senior, high-leverage operator reporting into the Head of Aerospace & Defense and with direct exposure to customers, account owners and Revenue leadership. Your experience will directly shape the strategy and execution behind CoLab’s most important aerospace and defense pursuits. You’ll build repeatable motions to support how we land and expand across primes, their supply base, and scale the wins across the A&D revenue team.

Aerospace and defense programs live and die by engineering decisions made under scrutiny. Design reviews gate every phase from SRR through PDR and CDR, an issue missed early can surface years later in qualification or production, and every decision has to stand up to the customer, the auditor, and the security requirements wrapped around the data. You will position CoLab as the platform that helps A&D engineering organizations make those decisions faster and with more confidence, and you will do it with the credibility of someone who has sat on the other side of the table.

This is a deal-facing, customer-facing, and product-influencing role. The right person is part strategist, part operator, part competitor. Someone who can hold a room of program executives and engineering leaders, build a hyper compelling value case grounded in their programs, and help map the path to the next step through the security, contracting, and program realities that slow everyone else down. This role will help to define our A&D industry strategy, not just execute against it.

Job Responsibilities

• Define the A&D playbook, including which segments to prioritize across defense primes, commercial aerospace, space, and the supply base, how to get in front of the right program and engineering leaders, and the land-and-expand sequences that grow a single program into enterprise adoption across divisions.
• Co-own enterprise deal strategy on CoLab’s most strategic A&D opportunities, partnering with our Head of Aerospace & Defense and account executives to define the path to close across primes, Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, and new space.
• Build the value cases, executive narratives, and deal decks that tie CoLab’s value to the program outcomes executives care about.
• Run executive, program, and engineering workshops that surface transformation goals, expose where design reviews break down across program phases, and build the case for change at the pace A&D organizations actually move.
• Multi-thread across the full buying group. Coach champions, navigate political landscapes, and orchestrate alignment across engineering, program management, quality and mission assurance, IT and security, contracts, and the executive team.
• Treat security and compliance as part of the deal strategy, not an afterthought, partnering with internal teams to work through ITAR, CMMC, FedRAMP, and ATO requirements alongside customer IT and security stakeholders.
• Translate how the market is shifting, from digital engineering mandates to new defense tech entrants and supply base pressure, along with the winning patterns from across A&D accounts, into positioning and plays the revenue team can put to work.
• Synthesize signals from strategic A&D accounts into structured product feedback, and validate product concepts with key customers to ensure new capabilities, AI included, fit the security, compliance, and deployment realities of regulated engineering organizations.
• Serve as connective tissue across revenue, product, and strategy for A&D, and support the Director of Industry Strategy & Transformation with market trends, competitive dynamics, and customer insights specific to the sector.

Our Ideal Candidate

• You’ve been there and done it in aerospace and defense. You’ve held engineering, program, or operations leadership at a prime, a major Tier 1. You can sit in a CDR, walk a production floor, and talk to a VP of Engineering or a program executive as a peer.
• Proven experience owning enterprise strategy, or transformation programs inside complex A&D organizations.
• Fluent in the A&D procurement process.
• High emotional intelligence and the ability to read a room of executives in real time. You know when to push, when to pause, when to ask the harder question, and when to take the win and move on.
• Competitive by nature and sharp on time value. You play to win, put in the reps, and run at high cadence. You take losses personally enough to learn and not personally enough to slow down. You know which work compounds and which is throwaway, and you make the call and move.
• Strong commercial and operational acumen. You translate technical capability into business outcomes that resonate with VPs of Engineering, program executives, CEOs, and CFOs. You spot process drag, see where reviews break down, and connect workflow friction to program cost, then translate it into a path forward.
• Clear, direct communicator and fluent with AI as a force multiplier. You write concisely, present without filler, and build a clean, compelling deck under pressure. You reach for AI to compress research, sharpen messaging, and do more with less, and you understand the guardrails A&D customers put around it.
• U.S. person, given the export-controlled nature of the work. An active or prior security clearance is a strong plus.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

• You are owning transformation workshops with our top A&D enterprise accounts.
• You have shipped an A&D playbook that is in use across the revenue org.
• You have meaningfully influenced the outcome of multiple seven figure A&D deals, partnering closely with our Head of Aerospace & Defense.
• You are trusted to drive executive and program leadership conversations across A&D without backup.

Extra Details

• This is a full-time, permanent position with a competitive compensation package that includes stock options
• Unlimited paid vacation, extended health benefits, and 401k matching
• Remote-friendly within the US.
• This role will have a travel component to visit customers onsite. Customer visits are typically 1-3 days total, one or two a month.

Equity Note
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