Be Luminary's senior industry counterpart for aerospace and defense. When a customer CEO, program executive, or general officer needs to talk to someone who understands their world, you're that person.
Own the industry. Your work should touch every deal in the vertical: the industry POV, the engagement theses, the value model, the executive relationship map.
Build the practice IP: reusable engagement frameworks, reference architectures, case studies, and a value model quantified against customer programs and baselines, including capability gained, not just cost removed. We don't have validated value data yet. Establishing it is your first mandate.
Be the person our team and customer executives seek out for industry expertise. Partner with the account team to open and develop relationships above the champion. You are often the reason the executive meeting happens and the voice in the room.
Pair with account teams on strategic accounts through a formal activation gate. Head of Sales proposes, you accept or decline in writing, with reasons. You carry a handful of accounts deeply.
On activated accounts: own the engagement thesis, the business case, and the executive narrative. Run executive discovery with the champion and the layer above, own the content of the executive meeting, and be in the room for it.
Shape Luminary's aerospace and defense strategy: which programs, which buyers, which procurement vehicles, in what order.
Set the industry POV and partner with Marketing to package and distribute it. Collaborate with marketing on what we say to the industry.
This is a business role. You're conversational in our technology and fluent in the technical problems our customers face, and you know when to bring in the Field CTO and delivery engineers rather than play one.
Feed Product, Marketing, and the CEO what you learn about how these customers fund programs and where our capability stops short of the business case.
Reports to Head of Sales. Direct line to the CEO.
How This Works With the Account Team
AEs land deals without you. You are never a gate on the sales process.
The AE owns the account commercially: pipeline, pricing, negotiation, procurement, upsell, and expansion. You own the industry thesis and the case that turns a pilot into a funded program, and you partner with the AE to develop the executive relationships above the champion.
You help open the executive room and carry the industry narrative in it. The AE closes the commercial. If the exec asks about price, you bring the AE in. Full stop.
Activation criteria, any one of: credible path to a seven-figure program within 12 months; the next conversation must happen above the champion; or a named lighthouse account where the industry story depends on the outcome.
What Success Looks Like
You're the speaker at a dinner of aerospace executives on the challenges in A&D that Physics AI can solve, and the room takes you seriously as a peer
We pursue an eight-figure proposal with a US government customer. You're instrumental in shaping the thesis, building the proposal, and helping sell it.
Two accounts move from scoped pilots to funded seven-figure executive programs, on a business case you built with the customer's own numbers
The A&D value model exists, has survived contact with a customer finance organization, and every AE in the vertical uses it
You
10+ years in aerospace and defense, including leading complex technical engagements with C-suite and senior government stakeholders
Have personally led $5M+ client relationships with aerospace or defense executives
Comfortable as the senior person in the room with flag officers, PEOs, and defense company CEOs
Can build a financial model from incomplete data, defend the assumptions to a hostile audience, and revise it when the audience is right
Strong at primary research. Getting engineers and program managers to give you real baseline numbers is harder than the modeling.
Have built or significantly grown a practice, business line, or sector offering, not just delivered within one