The Opportunity: Vice President

Location: Los Angeles, CA | Primarily Onsite

Company Overview:

Our client is a rapidly growing technology company serving mission-critical aerospace, defense, and industrial markets. The organization develops highly engineered products for demanding applications and is entering its next stage of growth. With established customer traction, strong technical capabilities, and an entrepreneurial operating environment, the company is investing in senior leadership to help shape new products, markets, and long-term growth.

Position Overview

The Vice President will lead the development and commercialization of an emerging portfolio of advanced products for high-performance aerospace and defense applications.

This is a unique role sitting at the intersection of technical leadership, product strategy, and commercial growth. The VP will work closely with technical teams to understand emerging capabilities, determine where those capabilities create meaningful customer value, and build the strategy required to bring them to market.

The right candidate will have enough technical depth to establish credibility with engineers and scientists while also possessing the commercial judgment and relationship skills to engage customers, senior executives, and strategic partners. Ultimately, this individual will serve as the business owner for an emerging product category—helping take promising technology from development into a meaningful, scalable business.

Key Responsibilities:

• Build and own the commercial and product strategy for an emerging advanced technology portfolio.
• Identify the highest-value markets, applications, customers, and opportunities for the company's technical capabilities.
• Translate customer needs and market requirements into clear product and development priorities.
• Serve as a critical bridge between customers, R&D, engineering, product development, and executive leadership.
• Build strategic relationships across the aerospace and defense ecosystem.
• Partner closely with technical teams to prioritize development efforts based on commercial opportunity and customer demand.
• Lead the transition of new technologies from development through customer qualification and commercialization.
• Identify and pursue new customer, program, and partnership opportunities.
• Develop the business model, organizational structure, resources, and capabilities required to support long-term growth.
• Present market strategy, investment requirements, and execution plans to executive leadership.
• Evaluate strategic partnerships and other opportunities that could accelerate growth.
• Remain personally engaged in important technical, customer, and business challenges while building the organization around the opportunity.

First-Year Mandate:

The initial mandate is to turn a promising portfolio of technical capabilities into a clearly defined and executable business strategy. The VP will quickly develop a strong understanding of the market, customer requirements, competitive landscape, and highest-value opportunities. From there, they will establish where the company should compete, what capabilities should be prioritized, which relationships matter most, and what resources are required to execute. This is not a role built around extended market analysis. The expectation is that the VP will develop the strategy, gain alignment, and move quickly into execution. As the business grows, the role is expected to evolve from developing the opportunity to leading the organization responsible for delivering it.

Qualifications: The ideal candidate is a technical-commercial operator who can move comfortably between engineering discussions, customer conversations, strategic planning, and business execution. They will likely have started their career in engineering, science, or another technical discipline before moving into broader product, program, strategy, commercialization, or business leadership responsibilities. The successful candidate must understand the technology deeply enough to earn credibility with technical teams while also being able to evaluate markets, understand customers, build relationships, and make sound business decisions.

Most importantly, this person should be energized by the opportunity to build something that does not yet have a finished playbook.

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years of meaningful technical experience within advanced materials, thermal protection, propulsion, high-temperature systems, composites, or a closely related aerospace or defense field.
• Additional experience in product development, program leadership, commercialization, strategy, engineering leadership, or business development.
• Strong understanding of high-performance materials, components, or systems used in demanding aerospace and defense environments.
• Experience supporting missile, propulsion, hypersonic, space, or other advanced aerospace applications strongly preferred.
• Experience taking a new product, material, component, or technical capability from development toward qualification, commercialization, or production.
• Demonstrated ability to translate technical capability into customer and commercial value.
• Experience building relationships with both highly technical and executive stakeholders.
• Ability to work effectively across R&D, engineering, product, manufacturing, customers, and senior leadership.
• Strong strategic judgment combined with a bias toward action.
• Experience within aerospace, defense technology, advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, or another highly technical operating environment.
• Technical master's degree or PhD strongly preferred.
• Military leadership experience is attractive, particularly when combined with a technical or engineering background.
• U.S. citizenship required.

Compensation & Opportunity:

• Mid-$200K's + meaningful equity participation
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits
• 401(k) company contribution
• Generous paid time off
• Professional development support
• Beyond compensation, this role offers significant professional upside. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to take ownership of an emerging product category and potentially grow alongside it into leadership of a substantial operating business.

Work Environment & Travel:

The position is based in the Los Angeles area and requires regular onsite presence to work closely with technical and leadership teams.

Some flexibility exists around individual schedules, but this is not intended to be a fully remote position. Approximately 25% travel should be expected for customer engagements, technical discussions, strategic partners, industry events, and other business initiatives. The environment is entrepreneurial, technically demanding, and highly accountable. For someone who wants to inherit a finished playbook, this will likely be the wrong opportunity. For someone who wants to help define the strategy, build the market, shape the product, and ultimately create a business around differentiated technology, it is a compelling leadership opportunity.