Mission Success Lead, US

Rowden

$160,000 - $225,000 / year

North Carolina, USFull-timeHybridIntermediate

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Description

Rowden is one of Europe's fastest-growing companies, building operational edge systems for defense, national security, and emergency response teams.

Veteran-founded in the UK in 2017, we turn advances in AI, sensing, and communications into practical capability for environments where connectivity is limited, degraded, or denied. Our focus is on getting useful technology into the hands of frontline teams faster, improving decision-making, and protecting people and critical assets.

We've grown to more than 200 employees, with a strong track record delivering critical programs for the UK Ministry of Defence and other national security customers. Alongside this, we're developing our own export-focused hardware and software products across RF and fleet management.

In 2026, Rowden secured £25 million from the UK's National Wealth Fund to accelerate growth across the UK and internationally.

We're now building on strong customer and partner traction in the United States, and this role will be part of Rowden's founding US team.

About the role

Rowden was founded with a core value to focus on the end user. As we enter the US, we want someone who genuinely backs that ambition: someone who loves our products, believes they can deliver real value for the US operational community, and wants to bring them something genuinely differentiated from a company whose values align with theirs.

The Rowden Mission Success Lead, US, exists to represent the US operational community and convert this engagement into revenue: generating leads, running demos and trainings, supporting exercises, and building advocacy for Rowden’s products among the users who need it. You will be the Rowden representative on the ground that end users trust, and the one who translates what they need into evidence Rowden can act on. This is a founding commercial role, made for someone entrepreneurial who wants a career-defining challenge with significant upside. Alongside your mission success remit, you take on operational responsibility for building Rowden’s US business as part of the founding team, including supporting hiring, facilities, and compliance processes.

Your initial focus will be taking Rowden’s portfolio of RF deception capabilities into US operational user communities, building the relationships, evidence, and demand needed to establish the capability in the market. Mimic, our first RF decoy product, received the 2025 Army Technology Excellence Award for EW Product Launch and is already seeing export traction across Europe, with a broader portfolio of networked and orchestrated deception capabilities following behind it. You’ll also take Dovetail, our edge fleet management platform, into larger-scale use across defence and critical industries.

You will report directly to UK leadership, working across customer success, business development and product development teams. You will partner closely with Rowden's VP Growth, US, feeding field insight into qualified opportunities.

We are looking for a recent veteran who has been an end user of EW systems, comms, or related deployed technology. Ideally you will have worked as both an operator and requirements or technology portfolio lead inside a PAE, such that you understand how user need becomes a requirement, and how a requirement becomes a budget line.

Our compensation packages are highly competitive and structured to create meaningful upside for strong performance.

Ideally you'll already be based within North Carolina or be willing to relocate for this opportunity.

Key Responsibilities

You will cover a wide remit with a unique level of ownership: user engagement and lead generation, identifying high-value exercises and events, running training and demos, capturing product feedback, and maintaining alignment with UK leadership.

Generate and shape new opportunities by staying close to the US operational community, translating relationships and trust into leads.
Engage directly with end users, understanding their operating context, constraints, and existing tech stack well enough to represent their needs credibly inside Rowden.
Identify which exercises, trials, user events, and experimentation environments will move the needle, and get Rowden’s products into those settings in a way that produces high value evidence.
Run and support product training, field demos, and user walkthroughs, showing up credibly in front of users and selling the vision for what Rowden’s capability can do.
Capture what users say and turn it into useful feedback for Rowden’s product team: what needs to change, what needs to be explained better, what’s been misunderstood, and what’s missing.
Exercise judgment on CONOPS, constraints, integration burden, and product trade-offs, discerning the difference between a strategically important user requirement and a feature request that would pull Rowden into development with limited commercial upside.
Maintain regular, proactive two-way communication with Rowden’s UK leadership, engineering, and product teams, to keep the pipeline and product roadmap aligned with what you’re hearing on the ground.
Take on operational responsibility for building Rowden’s US presence, supporting hiring, facilities, and compliance processes, as part of the founding team.

What will make this role exciting

You will be the trusted voice of the US user community inside Rowden, backed by products that already have strong traction. You’ll run demos, support exercises, and watch operators get excited about what Rowden can do, while shaping how the business builds products that users want. You’ll work with an exceptionally talented Rowden UK team who will support you all along that journey.

This is a role with real influence over Rowden’s US strategy, customer relationships and product direction, backed by established capabilities, growing international traction and a highly capable engineering team.

What will make this difficult

You won’t be given a playbook for this role; you’ll need to work out how to structure your time, which pursuits will yield valuable feedback or opportunities, and proactively engage with the UK team. You will need the judgment to separate a user’s genuine, strategically important need from an interesting but low-value feature request, and the discipline to keep growing your network rather than leaning on the same familiar contacts. There will be times where enthusiasm from users doesn’t translate into anything fundable, and you will need to learn from that without losing momentum. You’ll need to communicate openly and honestly with the UK team, admitting quickly when something has gone sideways or you’ve made the wrong call.

This role is for you if you are:

Values led. You are driven to improve technology for end users and frustrated by the bottlenecks that mean the right technology doesn’t make it that far.
Entrepreneurial. You aren’t afraid to take risks, and you are motivated by the idea of taking early-stage products into a new market rather than building on an established revenue base.
An owner. You see every problem as yours to solve and every opportunity as yours to go after. You are always looking for ways to add value.
Autonomous. You create your own structure and set your own priorities, while staying disciplined about looping in UK leadership and pulling on the resources available to you.
Open about what you don’t know. You will give an honest, calibrated view on where the product is working, where it isn’t, and where you’ve made the wrong call and need to pivot.
Curious beyond your own network. You actively look outside your existing contacts for new relationships and ideas, rather than relying only on people you already know.
Technically competent. You can turn a user’s frustration or excitement into requirements language, product feedback, and commercial evidence that Rowden can act on.
Comfortable in front of an audience. You can run a training, lead a demo, or hold a room of sceptical operators, and you enjoy it.

This role is not for you if you are:

More comfortable behind a desk than in front of users.
Reliant on a fixed, familiar network rather than continually building new relationships.
Uncomfortable saying no to a user request that doesn’t have real commercial legs.
Looking for a narrowly defined role with a fixed set of tasks.
Motivated primarily by closing and negotiating deals rather than by the user relationship itself.
In need of a mature, fully documented playbook before you’re willing to get moving.
Driven by ego or self preservation rather than doing what is right for the business and end users.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Must have

Recent military experience as an end user of EW systems, comms, or related deployed technology.
Experience inside a PAE, a requirements role, a portfolio management function, or a capability development team, with a genuine understanding of how user need becomes a requirement, and a requirement becomes a budget line.
Current, active relationships with people still close to exercises, experimentation, and requirements work.
Comfortable running or supporting product training, field demos, and user walkthroughs.
Ability to translate user feedback into requirements language, use cases, and product feedback Rowden’s team can act on.
Must be a U.S. citizen and hold an active U.S. Secret security clearance.
Ability to travel 40–60% including one week per quarter at Rowden's Bristol HQ.
Ability to complete 6-week onboarding at Rowden's Bristol HQ.

Nice to have

Experience in a business development role taking a new product to market.
Experience working for a foreign company building out its presence in the US.
Working knowledge of ITAR and EAR export control regimes.

Base Salary Range
$160,000—$225,000 USD

Benefits

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are!

We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants.

Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible.

Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!

Benefits

We are committed to building a flexible, inclusive, and enabling company. Our aim is to create a diverse team of talented people with unique skills, experience, and backgrounds, so please apply and come as you are! We also recognise the importance of flexible working and support this wherever we can. We typically operate a flexible, hybrid-working model, with an average 3 days in the office each week (dependent on the role). We welcome the opportunity to discuss flexibility, part-time working requirements and/or workplace adjustments with all our applicants. Rowden is a Disability Confident Committed company, and we actively encourage people with disabilities and health conditions to apply for our roles. Please let us know your requirements early on so that we can make sure you have everything you need up front to help make the recruitment process and experience as easy as possible. Finally, if you feel that you don’t meet all the criteria included above but have transferable skills and relevant experience, we’d still love to hear from you!

About this role

Rowden is building its US presence and needs someone who can authentically represent their operational technology to the defense and national security community. This founding commercial role combines direct user engagement—running demos, supporting exercises, and building advocacy—with operational responsibility for establishing Rowden's US business infrastructure. You'll be the on-the-ground trusted contact for end users, translating their operational needs into product feedback and qualified leads while working closely with UK leadership and the VP Growth, US.

The role centers on two products: Mimic, Rowden's software-defined RF decoy system (which won the Army Technology Excellence Award in 2025), and Dovetail, an edge device management platform for autonomous fleets. You need to know both products deeply enough to demo them credibly under operator scrutiny and defend them against experienced users. This demands someone with recent military or defense experience—ideally someone who has both operated EW, comms, or deployed technology systems and worked as a requirements or portfolio lead within a prime or allied contractor, so you understand how user need becomes requirement becomes budget.

This is a high-ownership role suited to an entrepreneurial veteran who wants significant upside and a career-defining challenge. Based hybrid in North Carolina or Alabama, you'll report directly to UK leadership, own user relationships and lead generation, identify high-value engagement opportunities, and feed field intelligence back into product development. Compensation is $160,000–$225,000, structured to reward strong performance.

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Pay for this role

$160,000 to $225,000 per year

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