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The Weekly Sitrep · Apr 26, 2026

How to Actually Get Hired in Defense Tech

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Sitreps2Steercos Substack · The Weekly Sitrep

Happy Saturday Weekly Sitrep Readers!

Wyatt, Max, and I just got back from eMerge Americas in Miami and I’m still running on Cuban coffee and whatever unholy energy was circulating through the Miami Beach Convention Center this week. If you weren’t there -- 20,000+ people, 60+ countries, 2,500 startups, and a National Security track that felt more like a Pentagon off-site than a tech conference. Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, headlined and laid out how the Department’s AI Acceleration Strategy is actually getting executed -- partnerships with frontier AI companies, the Defense Innovation Unit, Office of Strategic Capital, and the six newly defined Critical Technology Areas. Palmer Luckey was there. Eric Schmidt was there. The Army ran xTech|Live on the expo floor. And on the Tuesday before the main conference, they held a NATSEC Demo Day at PortMiami where vetted startups demoed mission-ready tech to 400+ senior national security leaders.

The energy around defense tech right now is not theoretical. It’s real money, real contracts, and real hiring.

Which brings me to the point of this week’s sitrep. We recently gave a talk with the Kellogg Aerospace & Defense Club on how to actually break into this space, and based on the questions we got -- and the conversations we had all week in Miami -- it’s clear that there’s massive interest in defense tech careers but not a lot of clarity on how the hiring actually works. The playbook is different from Big Tech or consulting, and the people who figure that out early have a huge advantage.

So today we’re putting the whole thing in writing. Org charts, roles, high level comp ranges, how to network, how to position yourself -- the ground truth from actually placing veterans and operators into these companies, from seed stage to the primes. If you’re targeting defense tech, this is your field manual.

But first….

Quick plug: we’ve been shipping a ton of new features on sitreps.com and if you haven’t been on the site recently, it’s a different animal. Here’s what’s live right now:

  • AI Transition Advisor -- an AI chatbot trained on 147 podcast episodes, 2,000+ veteran resumes, and 26+ career guides. Ask it anything about your transition and get real answers, not generic fluff.

  • Salary Explorer -- 50 benchmarks across 14 industries. Know what you’re worth before you negotiate.

  • Resume Builder -- build a military-to-civilian resume from scratch, or upload yours for AI feedback.

  • MBA Admissions Calculator -- plug in your GMAT/GRE and GPA, get matched to target schools.

  • Military Retirement Calculator -- High-3, BRS, Final Pay, REDUX. Know your numbers.

  • VA Disability Calculator -- calculate your combined rating and monthly comp.

  • Career Pivot Finder -- discover roles and industries based on your skills with salary data attached.

  • Transition Checklist -- 48 tasks organized by phase with progress tracking.

  • Community Forums -- discuss transition topics, ask questions, share wins.

  • Daily Sitrep -- daily intel brief covering defense, tech, business, and veteran affairs.

  • 40+ Career Path Guides -- deep dives on consulting, IB, defense tech, cybersecurity, enterprise sales, law, medicine, and more.

  • Job Board -- 50 live roles, updated weekly.

All free to explore. Create an account to unlock the full chatbot, save jobs, track your transition progress, and get the weekly digest. sitreps.com -- go poke around.

We’ve got 50 open roles on Sitreps right now. Here’s a taste of what’s live in defense tech and national security:

Plus dozens more across PE-backed operations, GM roles, and executive leadership. Browse all 50 openings on the Sitreps Job Board. We’ve placed 150+ veterans with 40+ partner companies at an average starting salary of $180K.

Summer is stacking up. Come grab a drink and talk shop with the community:

If you missed the Salt Lake City meetup in April or eMerge Americas this week, these are your next shots. In-person networking is still the single highest-ROI thing you can do for your transition. We wrote a whole piece on that earlier this year (”The Lost Art of the Drop-In”) and nothing has changed.

Here’s the mistake almost everyone makes: they treat defense tech like Big Tech or consulting. Spray applications on LinkedIn. Polish the resume. Wait for the recruiter to call.

That’s not how this works. Defense tech hiring runs on three things:

Trust. Relationships matter more than resumes. Referrals win. The hiring manager already has three people texting them about you before your resume hits the pile -- or they don’t, and you’re toast.

Referrals. Cold applications go nowhere. Warm intros open doors. Full stop. If you’re submitting through the careers page as your first move, you’ve already lost.

Execution. Early-stage defense companies have zero patience for overhead or “strategy.” They need people who can ship. If your pitch is “I’m a strategic thinker,” save it for consulting.

Walking the expo floor at eMerge this week reinforced all of this. Every founder I talked to said the same thing: “We need people who can execute, not people who need to be managed.” That’s the bar.

Defense tech isn’t one thing. It’s three very different businesses, and the roles inside each look completely different.

Hardware -- Test, manufacturing, supply chain. Physics and reliability dominate. Think companies like Castelion, Firestorm Labs, Saildrone -- if it flies, floats, or explodes, and something goes wrong, people can die. The bar is different. (We’ve profiled several of these companies on the Sitreps defense tech blog if you want the deep dives.)

Read the original on sitreps2steercos.substack.com ↗

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