Software Project Lead

About this role

About Us

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems.

ABOUT DEFCON AI

RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF DISRUPTION. DEFCON AI is an insights company that leverages artificial intelligence, mathematical optimization, data analytics, and software engineering for resilient optimization of complex systems.
In today’s dynamically changing world, DEFCON AI’s technology aligns outcomes with operational goals, better decision making, and empowers customers to anticipate assess, and mitigate the impacts of disruptions.

About the Role

This is a rare opportunity to be the software champion for a mission-critical DoW effort, owning it end to end from the customer's problem to working, deployed software.

As a Software Project Lead, you will own the software design, architecture, and delivery for a dedicated program. You lead first and build when needed: strong enough in software to get hands-on and cover ground yourself, and conversant enough in data science and AI to help decide what gets built and pull in the right specialists. Above all you lead and communicate, directing the developers on the effort, setting technical direction, and keeping the customer and team aligned.

Concretely, you own three things: the software build itself, integrating the optimization and analytics work into the product, and the path from unclassified development to secure delivery. You will not be alone: a program manager owns customer cadence, a subject-matter expert owns the mission content, and an optimization scientist owns the analytic core. Your job is to coordinate their work and turn it into shipped software, building from an existing starting point toward a durable, deployable system.

The work spans both modern commercial engineering practices and the realities of DoW delivery, with unclassified development that moves to a government classified environment to meet real data. This is a fully remote role with travel up to 25% to the customer site, DEFCON AI HQ, and vendor facilities as required.

Key Responsibilities

System Ownership & Architecture

• Own the software design, architecture, delivery & deployment for the program

• Be accountable for delivery; keep the effort honest about scope, schedule, and risk, and raise issues early.

• Favor proven, open-source and off-the-shelf tools, and reuse what already exists, over building from scratch.

Requirements & Customer Engagement