Job Description

The future of European defence is autonomous. We're backing the founders who'll build it.

That sentence either made your pulse spike or it didn't. If it did, keep reading.

European defence needs sovereign autonomous systems. No European hardware-AI champion exists in this category yet. We intend to build one. We're assembling the founding team for a stealth defence technology company. The domain sits at the intersection of embedded AI, computer vision, autonomous systems, and hardware that operates in environments where GPS doesn't work and comms are near-zero. The systems we're building must think for themselves.

The Role

You will be the technical co-founder. Not employee #1. Not a VP of Engineering at someone else's company. The person who defines the architecture, hires the first five engineers, and puts a working prototype into the field.

You will own:

• The full autonomy stack: guidance, navigation, control, sensor fusion, GPS-denied operation

• Embedded AI on edge compute, running onboard systems that cannot phone home for instructions

• Computer vision and perception in extreme, comms-denied environments

• The operator interface: if an operator can't deploy in under 10 minutes, we've failed

• The data platform and software layer that becomes the long-term moat

• A COTS-first hardware philosophy: buy what you can, build only what creates proprietary advantage

You

• You've built autonomous systems that operated in the real world. Not simulations. Not demos. Deployed.

• You're fluent in ROS2, real-time sensor fusion, and edge AI. And you've shipped something that worked outside the lab.

• You've spent years at a defence prime, a robotics research institute, or an autonomy startup. And you've hit the ceiling. You know exactly what you'd build with venture capital instead of four years of grant applications.

• You want to be a founder with real equity, not a senior engineer with a title.

• You're based in a NATO-allied European country.

What we bring

• Atlantic.vc backing: capital, operations, network

• Pre-seed funding ready to close around the right team

• Deep competitive intelligence across the entire landscape

• A regulatory moat that is structural and lasting

• Access to the right defence innovation ecosystems, procurement fast-tracks, and advisor networks across NATO

• Dedicated support to help you assemble an AAA founding team around you

What this is not

This is not a job listing. We're asking you to leave the safe thing, take founder equity, and build a generational European defence company.