Principal AI Innovation Specialist (PAIS)

Job Description: Principal AI Innovation Specialist (PAIS)

About KrateoSky

KrateoSky is building the trusted Western champion in AI aerial robotics—a unified perception and actuation platform that will make the skies the world's most trusted and transformative engine of productivity. We are not a drone company. We are the autonomy infrastructure powering robotic flight and aerial intervention across defense, industry, and public safety. We are executing a rapid roll-up strategy to consolidate best-in-class technologies, creating the first at-scale, AI-native alternative.

Speed and scale define our competitive advantage. We move fast by questioning assumptions, removing complexity, and rapidly demonstrating over analyzing. We scale by building certifiable platforms on reusable architectures. Our AI-native, digitally connected ecosystem amplifies this advantage, automating tedious work so engineers focus on novel problem-solving. We keep our back office small and our organization flat to maintain velocity and operate as one integrated team with real-time visibility into trade-offs, risks, and progress.

You're joining at the beginning when your decisions define how we scale to Western leadership. We're building a dream team of high performers to establish the processes, tools, and culture that enable rapid acquisition integration and platform scalability for missions that matter. No PowerPoint purgatory, no "that's how aerospace does it" sacred cows. First principles, data-driven decisions, hands-on execution.

Position Summary

The Principal AI Innovation Specialist (PAIS) is the operational anchor and technical leader of the KrateoSky AI Innovation Office (KSAIO). Working directly under the Head of AI Innovation, you will run day-to-day operations for the AI Innovation Office, maintain architectural consistency across KrateoSky's AI-native operating system, and direct a team of Innovation Specialists.

This is an elite, senior-heavy "player-coach" leadership position. You must span both of our core engineering archetypes: a highly productive full-stack developer who uses AI and Agentic toolchains to build at 5-20x speed, and an agentic AI systems specialist who can architect LLM-powered orchestrations, multi-agent frameworks, memory models, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations.

Embody our values and behaviors: deliver precision and quality, challenge how things are done, break problems into fundamentals, automate relentlessly, hold yourself accountable, and deliver together no matter the obstacles. You must exhibit Above the Line behaviors: operating as a Coach, Creator, and Challenger rather than a Victim, Hero, or Villain. You apply automation-first thinking: your default instinct is 'how do we eliminate this manual task' not 'who can I assign this to.' You act as a humble teacher, prioritizing ego-free knowledge sharing and documentation discipline. Finally, you maintain a strong PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) orientation, demonstrating a willingness to experiment, learn from failure, and iterate.

Key Responsibilities

• AI Innovation Office Leadership & Operations: Act as the primary execution delegate under the Head of AI Innovation. Own the day-to-day technical operating model and, as designated, support resource alignment, balance team capacity, and orchestrate structured technical integrations across portfolio companies.

• Architectural Coherence & Integration: Maintain high-level architectural standards across KrateoSky's "Digital Thread" (physical, transactional, and collaboration layers). Guide the evolution of central enterprise applications, recruiting systems, proprietary search engines, and learning management systems toward fully autonomous AI Agents integrated directly into our peer-to-peer mesh architecture.

• Agentic AI Execution: Build and deploy production-ready applications, interfaces, and multi-agent workflows. Maximize productivity gains (targeting 3-5x over traditional approaches) by utilizing AI-native and Agentic development environments to generate boilerplate, write test frameworks, draft schemas, and automate documentation.

• Portfolio Company Integration: Coordinate and govern our structured multi-phase system integration and transformation roadmaps for newly acquired portfolio companies. Map local systems, audit legacy bottlenecks (e.g. PLM-to-inventory data syncs), and supervise the deployment of Innovation Specialists.

• IP Capture & Platform Reuse: Ensure that all custom AI connectors, schemas, and agentic patterns built during portfolio integrations are harvested, modularized, and returned to our core shared agentic and AI-native library to continuously compound KrateoSky's technical edge.

• Governance & Compliance: Enforce strict data governance, security, and compliant deployment patterns across environments. Implement secure controls for high-risk boundaries.

• Team Coaching & Mentorship: Support career management, provide active feedback, and co-own the hiring bar for the team. Ensure no single points of failure exist in agentic logic, memory maintenance, or regression support through a robust dual-ownership model.

Required Qualifications

• Professional Experience: 8+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Systems Architecture, or AI/ML Engineering, with a proven track record of progressively increasing technical leadership.

• Elite Multi-disciplinary Engineering Depth: Shipped complex, production-ready software systems at scale. You are a pre-AI senior full-stack developer who has scaled your output 5-20x through AI-native and Agentic development toolchains.

• Agentic Engineering & AI-Native Mastery: Strong, hands-on expertise with LLM-powered systems, multi-agent frameworks, context engineering, prompt and tool design, vector databases, knowledge graphs, relational databases and Model Context Protocol (MCP) patterns.

• Strategic & Operational Leadership: Proven experience leading engineering teams, arbitrating staffing/delivery trade-offs, and managing day-to-day operations in a rapid startup or business integration environment.

• Extreme Diplomatic Soft Skills: Outstanding communication and influence skills. You will be modifying, upgrading and/or retiring founders' legacy systems across diverse portfolio companies; you must build deep technical trust and navigate resistance with exceptional tact.

• Startup Mentality & Values: Comfort with extreme ambiguity, an aversion to PowerPoint bureaucracy, and a bias for rapid prototyping. Embodiment of "Above the Line" behavior (Coach, Creator, Challenger).

• Automation-First Mindset: A natural, first-principles instinct to automate or eliminate manual tasks rather than delegate them.

• U.S. Person Status: Because this role involves access to export-controlled technical data, applicants must be a "U.S. Person" as defined by ITAR — a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident (green-card holder), or other protected individual. We confirm eligibility after extending an offer.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience at hyper-growth startups or in fast-paced corporate development/M&A integration teams.

• Direct familiarity with defense-related software development or aerospace/drone-industry ecosystems.

• Advanced certifications or degrees in Computer Science, Robotics, Engineering, or AI.

Logistics

• Location: Remote (US)

• Reports To: Head of AI Innovation

• Travel: Up to 25% (site visits, acquisition integration kickoffs/handovers)

• Compensation: $131,000 - $203,000 / year (Targeted base; total package includes comprehensive benefits)