Foundry Platform Lead

Job Description

Job Description

About Us

With more than 2 million nautical miles sailed and 50,000 days at sea, Saildrone has earned the trust of governments worldwide. Our unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) deliver continuous, real-time intelligence in the toughest oceans on Earth—giving our partners faster awareness, stronger security, and a decisive edge at sea.

Our USVs are long-range, extreme-endurance platforms powered by advanced sensors and proprietary AI - they have been designed to operate where no crewed vessel can. They collect critical insights above and below the surface to support border security, law enforcement, naval operations, and undersea infrastructure protection.

Headquartered in Alameda, CA, with offices in Washington, DC, and global deployment hubs, Saildrone operates missions worldwide. Join a fast-moving, mission-driven team at the intersection of AI, autonomy, and defense technology—where data turns into intelligence, and intelligence drives action.

The Role

Saildrone designs, builds, and deploys uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) that operate for months at sea in contested and extreme maritime environments. The Foundry Platform Lead will own and extend Saildrone’s use of the Palantir Foundry platform, supporting the full digital thread through design, manufacturing, test, fleet deployment, and operational feedback.

Reporting to the CFO (Information Systems), this role will lead the roadmap, architecture, development, and scaling of Foundry workflows, data models, pipelines, ontologies, dashboards, and automations that support hardware production and operational readiness. The ideal candidate blends software architecture, data modeling, and applied manufacturing workflow understanding, and is comfortable operating directly across engineering, production, supply chain, finance, and mission execution.

This role will take over and build upon the initial Foundry implementation completed with Palantir, evolving it into a Saildrone-owned, maintainable, and scalable internal platform.

Responsibilities

Foundry System Ownership and Architecture

• Own the architecture, ontology, integration patterns, and data lifecycle for Saildrone’s Palantir Foundry environment
• Extend and productionize workflows originally developed in partnership with Palantir.
• Establish governance for dataset management, version control, schema evolution, code style / standards, code review, and release processes.

Manufacturing Digital Thread Integration

Fleet Operations and Reliability Feedback Loop

Tooling and Developer Experience

Required Skills and Experience

Desired Skills and Experience

Location : This position is in Alameda, CA. Our waterfront office offers beautiful views of San Francisco Bay in always-sunny Alameda.

All employees are required to provide proof of authorization to work in the U.S. within their first 3 days of work. Please note that the Company does not sponsor employees for work visas or permanent resident cards to work in the U.S. If you need sponsorship for a work visa or green card, you will not be qualified for employment with Saildrone.

Benefits :

The salary range for the role is $189,000-$243,000 annually.

Individual compensation packages are based on geographic location, scope of the role, and relevant experience, among other factors.

Saildrone is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

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