A hands-on, field-based business development role. You make the calls, take the trips, and run the meetings.
You are the bridge between Smart Flight™ and the defense UAV operators who fly. Your job: get into the field, put the product in front of operators, learn how they really plan and fly missions, and feed that ground truth straight into the product.
Company: Shearwater Aerospace (Montreal, QC)
Location: United States, remote, living close to a defense UAS ecosystem
Reports to: CEO. Works day to day with the CTO on product feedback.
Type: Full-time (contract-to-hire acceptable, see note)
Travel: 30–50% (US, with travel to Canada: test ranges, operator sites, defense UAS events)
Why this role exists
Smart Flight™ is an intelligent autonomy layer that plans and adapts missions in real time for fixed-wing UAV BVLOS operations. Developed in partnership with DARPA, we fly at White Sands and are in partnership discussions with a major prime. What we do not have yet is a systematic presence with the people who feel the planning pain daily: defense UAV operators and the contractors who fly for them.
You build that presence. That means in office, in the crew room, earning operator trust and living where the aircraft fly — pointed at learning: how they plan today, where it breaks, what a bad plan costs them. You open the doors, run the field work, and bring the founders into the conversations that matter. The CTO joins for the technical depth; you make it happen and keep it happening. What you hear changes what we build, on a weekly cycle, and the operator network you develop stays yours to grow with the role (see Career path).
Who you'll work with
Defense services contractors and operators-for-hire (ISR, range support, flight test crews)




Military and military-adjacent UAS units and their support ecosystem
Ops managers and mission planners inside those organizations
What you'll own
Market map and field access (end-to-end)
Build the target map from zero: organizations, programs, and the named individuals who actually plan and fly missions. There is no list waiting for you
Reach operators through the channels this community respects: warm intros, events, ranges, veteran networks, direct approach. This is a small community and we get one first impression per organization
Own the full loop: source, contact, follow up, schedule, travel. Founders join the conversations; you generate them
Field engagement and evaluations
Run discovery conversations, solo or with founders, using our interview guide: current workflow, tools in use, what breaks, what it costs, in their words
Run structured product evaluations: put SFP in front of operators, watch them plan a real mission with it, capture where they hesitate, what they ignore, what they ask for
Represent Shearwater at defense UAS events, ranges, and exercises; be the person operators recognize and trust
Learning capture
Write a short after-action report on every conversation and evaluation, into a shared repository the founders read directly. Use the operator's own words wherever the wording matters — we would rather have the quote than your paraphrase — but this is a field report, not a transcript




Maintain contact and organization records with discipline: every interaction tracked, every follow-up kept
Secure return engagements; an operator who comes back is our strongest signal
Flag patterns weekly: pains heard repeatedly, workflow surprises, competing tools, requested capabilities
First 90 days — explicit success criteria
By day 30: the market map and the plan to work it — 50+ target organizations and 100+ named individuals, prioritized, with your own outreach approach for each segment. Nobody hands you this; you build it and then run it
30 conversations with target operators; founders present in at least 15
Written evidence per conversation in the shared repo, in the operator's own words
Top 3 pain hypotheses validated or killed , with named sources
10 operators agree to a second conversation or evaluation
In the first 90 days you are measured on access and evidence — the doors you open and what you bring back. Revenue follows from that, and the plan for it is built on what you find
Career path
Market development in defense starts before there is a pipeline. The first work is finding the organizations, getting in the room, and establishing what they actually need. That is what makes a pipeline possible.
Phase 1 — Field discovery (roughly 1–2 quarters). The mandate above. Every operator relationship you build is yours to keep
Phase 2 — Commercial ownership. When operators start pulling, you own those relationships through evaluation, adoption, and early revenue
The transition is evidence-triggered, not calendar-triggered: 10+ operators asking for the product unprompted, 3+ organizations in repeat engagement, core pain hypotheses confirmed. The founders sign

📌 Business development lead, us defense uas (Montreal)
🏢 Shearwater Aerospace
📍 Montreal