We're hiring a forward deployed engineer to embed with Aslan's customers and write the code that makes our platform solve their specific mission. You'll sit alongside intelligence analysts, targeting officers, and federal agents, learn the operational problem they're actually trying to solve, and build until the platform does something they can't live without.
The threats our operators face destroy lives at scale, and the people fighting them have never had a tool built for the terrain those threats now occupy. Every line of code you ship in the field puts capability in the hands of someone who has been outmatched by an adversary they couldn't previously reach. That's the weight of this job, and it's why it matters.
This is an engineering role, not a deployment or support role. You write production code at customer sites. You take our core platform and make it work inside operational environments that are messy, sensitive, and unlike anything the product team could have anticipated. You build the custom integrations, the tailored workflows, the mission-specific configurations that turn a general capability into something indispensable for this operator, on this mission, with these targets. And you bring every pattern, every failure, every insight back to the core engineering team so the platform gets better for everyone.
At this stage there is no playbook. You are the product team in the field. What the operator needs tomorrow is something nobody has built yet, and you'll figure it out on the ground, in real time, under real conditions.
Embed with customers and write production code that makes Aslan's platform solve their specific operational problem
Learn the customer's mission, targets, and workflows deeply enough to build the right thing, not the thing the product spec assumed
Build custom integrations, mission-specific agent configurations, tailored analytics, and operator-facing workflows that make the intelligence output actionable
Debug agent behavior in live operational environments and fix it with code, not escalation
Identify patterns across deployments and bring them back to the core engineering team as product insights that shape what gets built next
Iterate in days, not quarters, because the problems are live and the operators can't wait
3+ years of software engineering. You've shipped production code, not prototypes, and you've done it under pressure.
Full-stack generalist instincts. Whatever blocks the deployment becomes your job, whether that's backend services, data pipelines, agent configuration, or a UI the operator needs by morning.
Working knowledge of AI/ML systems, enough to reason about agent behavior, diagnose failures, and write the code that fixes them without waiting for the research team.
The ability to understand a domain that isn't yours. You'll sit with operators whose world you've never lived in and build software that fits their reality, not yours.
Self-directed to the core. When you're embedded, you're the engineering team. You make the calls.
DMV-based, willing to travel to customer sites regularly and stay for extended periods.
You've been embedded at a customer site writing production code, not visiting for a demo
Experience with AI agent systems, LLM applications, or autonomous systems in production
Prior work in classified, IC, or government environments
You've been the sole engineer on a live customer engagement at an early-stage company
Prior military, intelligence, or law enforcement background
Active, recent, or eligibility for a U.S. security clearance (TS preferred)
Our national security apparatus was designed for an adversary that congregated and operate in the physical world. The threats disrupting our way of life today have gone faceless, borderless, and beyond the reach of any human operator. Aslan builds the autonomous agents that reach them, unmask them, and stop them, before a life can be lost, a household can be bankrupted, innocence can be stolen, or our can be nation subverted.
In 12 months we've gone from founding to live operational tasking and pilots across multiple national security and law enforcement partners. We've proven it works. This role makes it permanent.
We’ve raised $20M to date from Khosla Ventures, XYZ, BoxGroup, 2048, Liquid 2, Precursor Ventures, and others.
We're not just repackaging commodity capabilities and building workflows. Aslan is pushing the boundaries what agents can accomplish for the highest stakes national security priorities. To remove the bottlenecks that keep us outnumbered and outmaneuvered by digital adversaries, we're hiring an AI engineer that lives and breathes the frontier of agent scaffolding, orchestration, and multi-agent systems.
You'll build the cognitive architecture that enables AI agents to force multiply their human counterparts, taking domain-specific autonomy beyond what off-the-shelf models can robustly accomplish. You'll figure out how frontier models can be used in heterodox ways and deploy the cutting-edge in post-training to take them in directions that were never previously imagined. Most importantly, you'll go beyond mere clever chaining and compound systems to build foundational improvements in task horizon to give the operators on the frontlines the leverage they deserve and the scale they need.
Design and build the cognitive architecture that lets Aslan's agents operate autonomously over extended task horizons: planning, reasoning, memory, and decision-making systems that sustain coherent, reliable behavior across days and weeks in adversarial environments.
Build the orchestration layer for multi-agent coordination at scale, including context-sharing, conflict resolution, and behavioral consistency across concurrent operations.
Push frontier models beyond their default capabilities through novel post-training, domain-specific fine-tuning (SFT, preference optimization, LoRA/QLoRA), and scaffolding strategies purpose-built for high-stakes autonomous operation.
Build evaluation frameworks for agentic behavior over extended deployments, focused on operational reliability, behavioral coherence, and regression detection at the timescales our agents actually operate.
Own the data feedback loop from live deployments, turning raw operational signal into training data and evaluation benchmarks that compound model improvements over time, under the sensitivity constraints of the domain.
Partner closely with forward-deployed and platform engineers to understand what \"better\" means operationally and get your systems into the hands of the people running missions.
Roughly 5+ years of software/ML engineering experience, at a senior level of judgment and autonomy. We're flexible on the senior-vs-staff label; we care about depth.
Hands-on experience building agentic AI systems that operate autonomously over extended time. You've designed the scaffolding, orchestration, or memory systems that let agents do sustained, real work.
Deep familiarity with how frontier models behave, fail, and get extended. You've fine-tuned open-weight LLMs, pushed them into novel territory through post-training or architectural changes, and shipped the result.
Strong software engineering and systems thinking. You build reliable, observable, debuggable production systems. Python, PyTorch, and the modern ML stack.
Rigorous instincts on the data side. You know model quality is mostly a data problem and you treat provenance, labeling, and evaluation as first-class engineering concerns.
Working knowledge of running models on constrained hardware: quantization, GPU memory management, inference optimization.
Experience building agents that operate in adversarial or contested environments where robustness to unexpected inputs and graceful degradation actually matter.
Prior work with multi-modal systems (text, image, audio) in an agentic context.
Experience with air-gapped or classified environments and their deployment constraints.
Active, recent, or eligibility for a U.S security clearance (TS preferred).
Our national security apparatus was designed for an adversary that congregated and operate in the physical world. The threats disrupting our way of life today have gone faceless, borderless, and beyond the reach of any human operator. Aslan builds the autonomous agents that reach them, unmask them, and stop them, before a life can be lost, a household can be bankrupted, innocence can be stolen, or our can be nation subverted.
In 12 months we've gone from founding to live operational tasking and pilots across multiple national security and law enforcement partners. We've proven it works. This role makes it permanent.
We’ve raised $20M to date from Khosla Ventures, XYZ, BoxGroup, 2048, Liquid 2, Precursor Ventures, and others.
We're looking for a Head of Government Growth to take Aslan from proven capability to durable, programmed funding. This seat turns operational traction into validated requirements, execution-year dollars, and recurring lines in the out-years.
The work is mechanical, not relational. You'll know what has to be true before a requirement can be validated, before a sole-source award can be made, and before money can move inside the fiscal year, then making each of those things true on a schedule.
You'll work three customer sets, each with its own resourcing logic:
Department of War: special operations and low-intensity conflict, counternarcotics and global threats, intelligence and security oversight, and the command intelligence, targeting, and irregular warfare staffs
Intelligence Community: directorates carrying collection and counterintelligence missions
Federal law enforcement: investigative components working transnational criminal organizations and counterintelligence
You should be deep in at least one and able to learn the others.
Drive operational results into validated requirements through the appropriate requirements and resourcing processes
Identify and sequence the funding mechanics for each effort: execution-year money and reprogramming to stand up and expand pilots, unfunded requirement placement to signal demand above the request, and the programming actions that turn one-time money into a recurring line
Build and own the full artifact chain: programming inputs (POM/IPL and equivalents), unfunded requirement justifications, reprogramming packages, requirement documentation, and out-year/FYDP inclusion
Map the decision terrain and engage the specific offices and people across programs, commands, and department components who validate requirements and control funding
Select and exploit the acquisition pathways and transition authorities that compress the timeline from identification of need to resolution of problem, with specific familiarity in rapid-fielding and prototype pathways (e.g., OTAs, CRADAs, and urgent need mechanisms)
Use congressional touchpoints where they reinforce the internal programming case, sequenced to the mark calendar
Translate all of it into a single dated transition roadmap and serve as the company's internal authority on resourcing and acquisition mechanics
You have personally taken at least one capability from no requirement, no vehicle, and no line item to on-contract, then expansion, then a programmed out-year line. Not supported it. Ran it.
You can name the vehicle, the account, the appropriation, and the fiscal year for each step
You have spent time in government and then carried that fluency into industry, or you did the whole thing from the industry side at a company whose product had no program of record when you arrived and has one now
You do not wait for the government to move. You find out exactly what is blocking them and you clear it.
Granular command of PPBE and programming, unfunded requirement mechanics, and execution-year reprogramming including below-threshold actions
Familiarity with the accounts and pathways that fund non-traditional intelligence capabilities across defense-wide counternarcotics and global threats programs, special operations, IC acquisition, and investigative funding
A record of moving capabilities downrange through a mastery of non-FAR channels, tactics, and terrain
The judgment to tell us early when a pathway is not real, before we spend a quarter on it
Active or recent S, TS, or TS/SCI. We can sponsor.
Program office experience owning acquisition milestones and funding lines in a software, intelligence, or special programs portfolio
Familiarity programming intelligence-flagged capabilities (e.g., MIP, MFP-11)
Experience at an early-stage defense or national security company
Our national security apparatus was designed for an adversary that congregated and operate in the physical world. The threats disrupting our way of life today have gone faceless, borderless, and beyond the reach of any human operator. Aslan builds the autonomous agents that reach them, unmask them, and stop them, before a life can be lost, an innocence can be bankrupted, or our can be nation subverted.
In twelve months we've gone from zero to live operational tasking and pilots across multiple national-security and law enforcement customers. We've proven it works. This role makes it permanent.
We’ve raised $20M to date from Khosla Ventures, XYZ, BoxGroup, 2048, Liquid 2, Precursor Ventures, and others.
We're looking for a Head of National Security to own Aslan's relationship with the government end to end. You operated at the commanding heights of a mission, an operational division, a combatant command directorate, or a policy-and-resourcing shop, where you owned doctrine, budget, people, and execution at once. You know how decisions actually get made at that altitude: which principals have to be convinced, which forum a priority has to clear, how a capability moves from a good idea nobody's heard of to a thing the enterprise decides it needs. You've sat in the chairs where those calls happen, and you carry the judgment and the standing that only comes from having done it.
Aslan needs that altitude. We have a proven capability and a working-level campaign to institutionalize it, but working-level effort alone can't set the agenda, shape how a requirement is perceived by the people who validate it, or open the doors that matter at the executive level. That's what you'll do. You'll set the strategy for how Aslan is understood across the agencies we serve, carry it directly to the senior operators who decide what rises and what waits, and provide the top-cover that lets the working-level campaign move faster and land harder than it could alone.
This is a hybrid role that leans operating. You're not a name on an advisory roster who surfaces once a quarter. You'll build and run the socialization campaign that puts Aslan on the minds and the menus of executive decision-makers, partner day-to-day with our capture and resourcing lead to sequence the enterprise campaign, and know when to spend your own standing to move something the working level can't.
If you want a ceremonial board seat, this isn't it. If you've run a mission from the top and you want to bend the machinery from above one more time, for something that matters, read on.
Set the strategy for how Aslan is positioned and understood across the mission communities we serve
Build and run the executive socialization campaign that establishes Aslan as a recognized priority among senior agency decision-makers
Shape how the requirement is understood by the principals and forums that validate and rank it, so it's seen for what it is rather than left to advance on its own
Provide executive top-cover to the working-level capture and resourcing effort, and sequence the two into one enterprise campaign
Open and hold the senior-level doors that the working level cannot, and know when to spend your own standing to move a decision
Advise leadership on how decisions are really made at the executive altitude, where the leverage points are, and how to time them
Serve as a senior face of Aslan to the agencies, in coordination with the capture, resourcing, and government-relations efforts
You ran an operational division, a program, a combatant command directorate, or a policy-and-resourcing organization from the top, with ownership of doctrine, budget, personnel, and execution. One or more of the following:
Former DoD senior official or flag officer operating within or across counter-narcotics, special operations, homeland defense, or special programs missions
Former DHS senior executive from a component's operational or intelligence leadership, with a particular focus on counter-TCO, cyber and operational technology, and counter-threat finance
A record of leading a mission, division, or directorate at the executive level, with authority over its people, budget, and execution
Deep, current standing with the senior operators and principals who set agendas and rank priorities in the relevant mission communities
Fluency in how requirements are validated, ranked, and resourced at the enterprise level, and instinct for where and when executive weight changes an outcome
The judgment to operate cleanly within your post-government obligations and to know that credibility, not favors, is the asset
Active or recent S, TS, or TS/SCI
Standing relationships spanning both the DoD and DHS sides of the counter-transnational-threat mission
Familiarity with the executive-level resourcing and program-review bodies that govern funding and acquisition decisions
A history of championing non-traditional capability into a legacy enterprise
SES/flag-equivalent tenure
Our national security apparatus was designed for an adversary that congregated and operate in the physical world. The threats disrupting our way of life today have gone faceless, borderless, and beyond the reach of any human operator. Aslan builds the autonomous agents that reach them, unmask them, and stop them, before a life can be lost, a household can be bankrupted, innocence can be stolen, or our can be nation subverted.
In 12 months we've gone from founding to live operational tasking and pilots across multiple national security and law enforcement partners. We've proven it works. This role makes it permanent.
We’ve raised $20M to date from Khosla Ventures, XYZ, BoxGroup, 2048, Liquid 2, Precursor Ventures, and others
We're looking for the high-energy, high-agency generalist to be Aslan's first business operations hire. The Aslan mission is one of ruthless tunnel vision on the specific outcome or feature that makes our invisible adversaries more visible, the people contesting them more effective, and our collective safety less illusory. Specificity comes at the expense of being able to generalize. We are looking for the generalist who can navigate this.
You will wear many hats. You won't let a single detail fall through the cracks. You will not navigate a hierarchy, you may be sitting across from a flag officer or case officer within your first week.
You won't merely build the operational glue for a company building for the highest stakes missions, you will create the architecture that enables us to defy the conventional wisdom of who contests our adversaries (and where).
Your responsibilities will range from orchestrating an office relocation, and all of the underlying wrinkles that entails, to identifying a critical personnel gap and spinning up the hiring machine to find and persuade that person, to ensuring the registrations, documentation, and deadlines that keep this ship afloat are addressed. Whether it's Aslan's own internal robustness or all of the minutiae required to go from an affirmative yes to a live, operational pilot with a national security partner, you will build the framework, execute on it, and grow it into a system.
This role isn't for the person who doesn't have just an iota of paranoia as they're falling asleep that there's a fire brewing, the person who is content with \"good enough,\" or the person who seeing and stopping the most insidious threats to our way of life merely entails linear effort.
Your responsibilities will largely entail:
Owning everything without a function yet, including finance ops, vendors, contracts, insurance, registrations, and the compliance deadlines nobody's tracking until they're late.
Build the systems the company runs on, including onboarding, tooling, docs, and internal process, so the same fire doesn't happen twice.
Be the operational glue on whatever's urgent, chiefly hiring pushes, the office, security logistics, partner-facing setup, and the connective work between teams that otherwise falls through.
A former private equity or VC investor, or top-tier consultant, where you learned to hold rigor and speed at the same time
A BizOps, chief of staff, or first-ops hire at a Series A-C startup, where you built the function instead of inheriting it
A founder who built and ran your own company, so you know what it takes when there's no one to escalate to
Campaign or advance staff, where the deadline never moves and the machine has to hold
Think tank operations or programs, where the registrations, documentation, and deadlines were yours to keep straight
National security, government, or IC background, where the mission was always bigger than the paycheck
If this is you, you will become a central pillar in the most important inflection to national security. The spoils reaped won't just denominated in material terms, but in lives saved.
","descriptionPlain":"ABOUT ASLAN\n\nOur national security apparatus was designed for an adversary that congregated and operate in the physical world. The threats disrupting our way of life today have gone faceless, borderless, and beyond the reach of any human operator. Aslan builds the autonomous agents that reach them, unmask them, and stop them, before a life can be lost, a household can be bankrupted, innocence can be stolen, or our can be nation subverted.\n\nIn 12 months we've gone from founding to live operational tasking and pilots across multiple national security and law enforcement partners. We've proven it works. This role makes it permanent.\n\nWe’ve raised $20M to date from Khosla Ventures, XYZ, BoxGroup, 2048, Liquid 2, Precursor Ventures, and others\n\n\n\n\nROLE\n\nWe're looking for the high-energy, high-agency generalist to be Aslan's first business operations hire. The Aslan mission is one of ruthless tunnel vision on the specific outcome or feature that makes our invisible adversaries more visible, the people contesting them more effective, and our collective safety less illusory. Specificity comes at the expense of being able to generalize. We are looking for the generalist who can navigate this.\n\nYou will wear many hats. You won't let a single detail fall through the cracks. You will not navigate a hierarchy, you may be sitting across from a flag officer or case officer within your first week. \n\nYou won't merely build the operational glue for a company building for the highest stakes missions, you will create the architecture that enables us to defy the conventional wisdom of who contests our adversaries (and where).\n\n\n\n\nRESPONSIBILITIES\n\nYour responsibilities will range from orchestrating an office relocation, and all of the underlying wrinkles that entails, to identifying a critical personnel gap and spinning up the hiring machine to find and persuade that person, to ensuring the registrations, documentation, and deadlines that keep this ship afloat are addressed. Whether it's Aslan's own internal robustness or all of the minutiae required to go from an affirmative yes to a live, operational pilot with a national security partner, you will build the framework, execute on it, and grow it into a system. \n\nThis role isn't for the person who doesn't have just an iota of paranoia as they're falling asleep that there's a fire brewing, the person who is content with \"good enough,\" or the person who seeing and stopping the most insidious threats to our way of life merely entails linear effort. \n\nYour responsibilities will largely entail:\n\n - Owning everything without a function yet, including finance ops, vendors, contracts, insurance, registrations, and the compliance deadlines nobody's tracking until they're late.\n\n - Build the systems the company runs on, including onboarding, tooling, docs, and internal process, so the same fire doesn't happen twice.\n\n - Be the operational glue on whatever's urgent, chiefly hiring pushes, the office, security logistics, partner-facing setup, and the connective work between teams that otherwise falls through.\n\n\n\n\nWHO YOU ARE \n\n - A former private equity or VC investor, or top-tier consultant, where you learned to hold rigor and speed at the same time\n\n - A BizOps, chief of staff, or first-ops hire at a Series A-C startup, where you built the function instead of inheriting it\n\n - A founder who built and ran your own company, so you know what it takes when there's no one to escalate to\n\n - Campaign or advance staff, where the deadline never moves and the machine has to hold\n\n - Think tank operations or programs, where the registrations, documentation, and deadlines were yours to keep straight\n\n - National security, government, or IC background, where the mission was always bigger than the paycheck\n\nIf this is you, you will become a central pillar in the most important inflection to national security. The spoils reaped won't just denominated in material terms, but in lives saved."},{"id":"5cbe959b-0026-46b2-b489-bf00f9b3a698","title":"Evals Lead","department":"Engineering","team":"Engineering","employmentType":"FullTime","location":"Washington, DC Metro Area","secondaryLocations":[],"publishedAt":"2026-08-10T04:16:11.173+00:00","isListed":true,"isRemote":null,"workplaceType":null,"address":{"postalAddress":{"postalCode":"20005","addressCountry":"United States"}},"jobUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aslan/5cbe959b-0026-46b2-b489-bf00f9b3a698","applyUrl":"https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aslan/5cbe959b-0026-46b2-b489-bf00f9b3a698/application","descriptionHtml":"Our national security apparatus was designed for an adversary that congregated and operate in the physical world. The threats disrupting our way of life today have gone faceless, borderless, and beyond the reach of any human operator. Aslan builds the autonomous agents that reach them, unmask them, and stop them, before a life can be lost, a household can be bankrupted, innocence can be stolen, or our can be nation subverted.
In 12 months we've gone from founding to live operational tasking and pilots across multiple national security and law enforcement partners. We've proven it works. This role makes it permanent.
We’ve raised $20M to date from Khosla Ventures, XYZ, BoxGroup, 2048, Liquid 2, Precursor Ventures, and others.
Aslan builds autonomous agents that run for weeks at a time across many external systems, plan their own next steps, and work toward an objective. Scoring them the usual way doesn't work. Individual outputs look fine. Results come back late or not at all. What we need to know is whether the agent chose well at the moment it chose, and nothing off the shelf measures that.
This is our first quality role. You'll operate the platform daily, build the tooling that catches what you catch by hand, and own the decision to ship. We deploy on-premise on a fixed cadence and can't push fixes after delivery.
Run the platform yourself every day and log what's wrong in enough detail that an engineer can reproduce it.
Sample agent plans, get them rated on whether the agent made the right call, and turn the ratings into a versioned dataset. Engineering uses it as a regression suite. The training side uses it as labels.
Diagnose whether a bad decision came from the model or from the harness handing it the wrong context, and route each to the right owner.
Write and run checks over each agent's full history, and over properties that only hold across the whole set of running agents.
Build a simulation harness so a week of agent operation runs overnight against a candidate build.
Define what counts as a regression between builds. Measure both whether agents last and whether they get anywhere. A build that only makes them cautious is a failed build.
You've owned evals for a shipped LLM or agent product, and you can say what your suite caught and what it missed
You've built a labeled dataset that got used for training, not just for measurement
You've picked a proxy metric because the real signal wasn't available, and you can defend the choice
You know when LLM-as-judge works and when it doesn't
You'd rather write the check than file the ticket
Strong Python
An evals framework you've run in production: Inspect, Promptfoo, Braintrust, Arize, LangSmith or equivalent
Familiarity with agent harness internals: memory, context assembly, tool selection
Preference data, process supervision, or reward modeling experience
Enough statistics to tell a regression from noise on small samples
Evaluating agents that run for days or weeks, where per-episode metrics don't work
Systems you can't roll back or reset
Graph stores, provenance, lineage tracking
Eligible for a US security clearance