Principal Defence Systems Engineer

Build and lead the team that puts SkyWatch's platform inside Canada's sovereign and defence environments. SkyWatch is opening an Ottawa engineering team to deliver a sovereign version of its platform: deployable in private cloud, on premises and air-gapped, accredited for government use, interoperable with defence systems, and carrying its AI agents inside the security boundary. This is a founding role: the principal is the first hire and the technical owner, reporting to the CEO, and will build the team from the ground up, about six engineers and two continuously staffed co-op seats over 2027.

Responsibilities

Own the sovereign architecture, including deployment architecture for private-cloud, on-premises and air-gapped environments, data segregation and secure multi-tenant distribution, and end-to-end security design; Lead accreditation, owning the technical evidence for security assessment and authorization, including ITSG-33 controls at Protected B, with audit and logging built in; Hold a very high bar for user experience for analysts and operators working under time pressure, often disconnected; Deliver interoperability with tactical dissemination and defence data standards (NITF/NSIF, SIDD, GeoPackage, STANAG 4559) and integration with common operating picture, GIS and TAK environments; Bring AI inside the boundary through agent workflows over sovereign data, trace retention for audit, human-in-the-loop analyst workflows, and evaluation of answer quality and latency; Run roadmap and delivery for Government & Defence and act as technical acceptance authority at each milestone gate; Make calls that are good for the customer and for SkyWatch, building sovereign capabilities once for many customers where possible; Build and lead the team, hiring, leading and growing the Ottawa engineers and running a co-op mentorship programme with local universities; Own the government support surface, including the support agent, its user experience and its knowledge corpus inside the sovereign access boundary

Requirements

10+ years building production software; 3+ years as a principal, architect or technical lead on secure or defence systems; Hands-on experience with on-premises, private-cloud or air-gapped deployment; Hands-on experience with security assessment and authorization (ITSG-33, NIST 800-53 or equivalent); Experience leading an engineering team through milestone-based delivery to a government customer; Software shaped for analysts or operators that set a high bar for usability, which can be walked through at an unclassified level; Experience making build decisions with a business trade-off, such as cost to deliver, reuse across customers or time to market; Canadian citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a Government of Canada security clearance (Secret or higher)

Nice to have

Experience with geospatial, imagery or ISR data and defence interoperability standards (strongly preferred); Experience deploying LLM or agent systems in regulated environments (preferred)

Benefits

Base salary plus stock options; Health benefits; On-site or hybrid work from Ottawa