The posting
CHAOS Industries is redefining modern defense with a multi-product portfolio that gives the ultimate advantage—domain dominance. The company's products are powered by Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN™), empowering warfighters, commercial air operators, and border protection teams to act faster, adapt rapidly, and stay ahead of evolving threats.
CHAOS Industries was founded in 2022 and has raised a total of $1 billion in funding from leading investors, including 8VC, Accel, and Valor Equity Partners. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, and London. For more information, please visit www.chaosinc.com.
Role Overview:
As the Capability Strategist, Missiles at CHAOS, you will own the fires and targeting capability strategy across CHAOS's strike missile products and the broader set of fires mission areas the company supports. You will bring recent, real-world targeting and fires experience to the way CHAOS designs, tests, fields, and sells its weapons: you understand how a target actually gets developed, validated, weaponeered, and prosecuted, how the Army and the joint force train and employ their targeteers, and how requirements for long-range fires are shaped before they ever reach a program office.
The role is two-sided. For engineering, you will turn warfighter needs into requirements, trades, test objectives, and scenarios that guide product investment, and you will explain the operational rationale behind each. For business development and marketing, you will turn the same operational understanding into the context, win themes, demonstrations, and senior-leader messaging that let CHAOS speak credibly to fires and targeting customers. You will build and hold CHAOS's relationships across the US Army and joint fires and targeting enterprise, so that the company hears about operational problems before they become requirements, and you will have a formal voice in product roadmap and capture prioritization for the fires portfolio. The level of this role will be set to match the experience and scope the selected candidate brings. The role is comparable to a strategic mission engineer or senior operational subject matter expert at other defense companies.
This is a foundational hire. You will operate with limited guidance in a fast-moving environment, identify what the warfighter actually needs, and generate creative, practical solutions to operational problems that do not yet have a defined answer. You will have the freedom to move fast.
Responsibilities:
- Own the fires and targeting capability strategy. Define and maintain CHAOS's capability strategy for long-range strike, land-attack and anti-ship missiles, and related fires mission areas, including the target sets, employment concepts, and operational problems the products must solve, and keep it current as threats, doctrine, and customer priorities change.
- Translate warfighter needs for engineering. Turn the realities of the joint targeting cycle, weaponeering, collateral damage estimation, battle damage assessment, and fires employment into requirements, trades, and test objectives that engineering and product teams can design, build, and test against, and explain the operational rationale behind each.
- Contextualize the mission for business development and marketing. Articulate the "so what" of CHAOS's strike missile products for the warfighter and the theater plan, and shape win themes, proposal content, demonstration design, and senior-leader messaging so they reflect what matters to the people who will employ the weapon.
- Build and hold the fires and targeting relationships. Own CHAOS's relationships across the Fires Center of Excellence, the Field Artillery and targeting warrant officer community, the Multi-Domain Task Forces, theater and joint targeting organizations, the Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) and joint fires community, and the relevant program offices, test, and training organizations, and engage them to shape requirements and advantage CHAOS in future competitive programs.
- Shape the roadmap and capture priorities. Serve as a standing voice in product roadmap and capture prioritization decisions for the fires portfolio, bringing the operational case for what to pursue, what to demonstrate first, and what not to claim until it has been shown.
- Translate current and future concepts of operation—including US and allied force standard operating procedures (SOPs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) for long-range fires, multi-domain operations, and joint targeting—into mission engineering and operations analysis design.
- Identify unmet operational needs across the strike kill chain (find, fix, track, target, engage, assess) and generate creative, practical solutions, working with engineering and product teams to turn them into capability concepts, CONOPS, and study designs.
- Enable the translation of validated intelligence community products (NASIC, DIA, MSIC, ONI, NGIC, MCIA, and partner agency assessments) on adversary air defense, electronic warfare, counter-battery, maritime, and related threat systems into modeling parameters, scenario constructs, and red force order of battle for mission-level simulations.
- Lead blue force CONOP-informed scenario development for strike missions, ensuring scenarios reflect credible blue force fires CONOPS, doctrine, target sets, and projected capabilities, not generic boilerplate, and validate operating models and simulation outputs against authoritative source data and operational experience.
- Maintain continuous awareness of adversary threats, capabilities, and evolving TTPs—drawing on intelligence community reporting, operational lessons learned, and open-source analysis—and ensure threat representations in models, scenarios, and studies remain current.
- Brief capability assessments, scenario rationale, and analytical findings to senior technical leadership, program executives, and government customers, including DoD, DARPA, and IC stakeholders up to the flag/SES level.
- Partner with engineers, data scientists, and analysts to translate operational and intelligence questions into well-structured analytical approaches. Push back when the question being asked isn't the right one.
- Mentor and guide capability strategists and analysts on the team in targeting, fires employment, and engagement with the operational community.
- Support classified data exchanges and mission data activities with US and allied partners as directed.
- Support programs spanning DoD services, DARPA, intelligence community, and commercial customers, and partner with engineering, product, growth, and customer teams to shape new business pursuits.
Minimum Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree or higher, or equivalent military operational and analytical experience.
- 10+ years of experience in military operations, defense, intelligence, or advanced technology programs through government or industry employment.
- Recent, substantial targeting and fires experience in a deployed or operational environment, for example as a targeting or fire support warrant officer, a targeting cell chief or targeteer in a theater or joint task force, a JTAC or joint fires observer, a fires planner at division, corps, or theater level, or a strike or weapons officer, including target development, weaponeering, collateral damage estimation, and battle damage assessment.
- Direct experience planning or employing long-range fires, precision strike, or anti-ship capabilities against a peer or near-peer adversary.
- Demonstrated ability to explain operational needs to technical audiences and technical capabilities to operational audiences.
- Demonstrated ability to operate with limited guidance: define the problem, set the approach, and deliver without waiting to be told what to do.
- Track record of generating creative, practical solutions to operational problems and carrying them through to adoption.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional efforts spanning operations, engineering, product, and business development teams.
- Strong data visualization skills and comfort developing CONOPS/OV-1 visuals and briefing packages.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including experience briefing flag/general officer or SES-level audiences.
- Eligibility to obtain a Top Secret clearance.
- Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally, including to customer, partner, and operational sites.
Preferred Requirements:
- Active Top Secret clearance.
- Formal targeting qualification, such as the Joint Targeting School, Army Targeting Course, or service JTAC certification, or service as a Fire Support or Targeting Warrant Officer.
- Experience with the joint targeting cycle in a theater or joint task force targeting cell, including dynamic targeting and time-sensitive targets.
- Senior targeting or fires experience at the branch, service, theater, or joint level, including demonstrated influence on how a service or the joint force trains, qualifies, or employs targeteers or fires professionals, or on fires requirements, doctrine, or capability development.
- Established relationships across the US Army and joint fires and targeting communities, including the Fires Center of Excellence, Multi-Domain Task Forces, and theater targeting organizations.
- Experience analyzing the full kill chain across multiple domains, including air, surface, maritime, space, and electronic warfare engagements.
- Experience leading study teams or working groups across organizations, including threat-informed scenario development, model accreditation, or V&V efforts.
- Experience supporting rapid development programs across DoD services, DARPA, ONR, AFRL, COCOMs, the acquisition community, or commercial advanced technology programs.
- Experience supporting capture and positioning activities (RFI/RFP responses, white papers, technical exchanges) and shaping new business pursuits.
Why CHAOS?
- Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision benefits 100% paid for by the company
- Additional benefits: 401k (+ 50% company match up to 6% of pay), FSA, HSA, life insurance, and more
- Our Perks: Free daily lunch while you're working onsite, fully-stocked kitchen, unlimited PTO, casual dress code
- Compensation Components: Competitive base salaries, generous pre-IPO stock option grants, relocation assistance, and (coming soon!) annual bonuses
- Team Growth: 500+ employees and counting across 5 global offices
Salary Range: $185,000 - $260,000
The stated compensation range reflects only the targeted base compensation range and excludes additional earnings such as bonus, equity, and benefits. If your compensation requirements fall outside of the range, we still encourage you to apply. The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a range of compensation factors, inclusive of base salary only. Actual salary offer may vary based on (but not limited to) work experience, education and/or training, critical skills, and/or business considerations.
Recruiting Agencies: CHAOS Industries does not accept unsolicited resumes or outreach. Unsolicited submissions will not be reviewed or compensated.
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