Foundry Platform Lead

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 product ionize 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

● Integrate engineering (CAD/PLM/BOM), manufacturing (ERP/MRP, MES), test, and field telemetry data into a unified digital thread.

● Provide real-time visibility into build state, non-conformances, test results, supply constraints, and production KPIs.

● Deliver tools and dashboards that improve throughput, yield, cost, and quality across manufacturing and assembly.

Fleet Operations and Reliability Feedback Loop

● Provide tools that Ingest, structure, and analyze reliability data and operational telemetry from deployed vehicles.

● Build and maintain tooling that manages vehicle configuration, operational scheduling, and vehicle servicing.

● Enable engineering and mission teams with operational readiness and performance data products.

Tooling and Developer Experience

● Establish reusable code and workflow patterns inside Foundry.

● Train engineering and production teams to self-serve and contribute responsibly.

● Transition Foundry from Palantir-led to Saildrone-owned development.

Required Skills and Experience

● 5+ years of experience in software or data platform development.

● 2+ years of hands-on experience building in Palantir Foundry or an equivalent platform.

● Strong proficiency in Python and/or Type Script, plus SQL and pipeline development.

● Experience with Git (or other version control systems) and CI/CD practices.

● Understanding of manufacturing, hardware product development, or physical systems workflows (CAD, PLM, BOM, test systems, MES, ERP).

● Ability to turn ambiguous workflows into structured data models and usable tools.

● Strong documentation and communication skills.

Desired Skills and Experience

● Experience with React.

● Previous engineering management experience strongly preferred.

● Experience…