Full-Time

Strategic Partnerships Lead

Istari Digital

Istari Digital

51-200 employees

Model-based engineering platform and digital twins

Compensation Overview

$174k - $210k/yr

+ Equity Grants + Stock Options

No H1B Sponsorship

Washington, DC, USA + 2 more

More locations: Virginia, USA | Maryland, USA

Hybrid

Hybrid role; in-person collaboration prioritized; occasional off-site gatherings.

US Citizenship Required

Category
Business & Strategy (2)
,
Required Skills
CAD
Observability

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Requirements
  • 6–10+ years of experience in engagement management, strategic partnerships, federal business development, capture support, or ecosystem-focused roles.
  • Experience operating in DoD, federal civilian, or national security markets with exposure to formal teaming and capture processes.
  • Background working with engineering software, data platforms, infrastructure tools, or highly technical B2B solutions.
  • Demonstrated success translating partnerships into tangible capture or revenue outcomes.
  • Strong understanding of federal teaming dynamics, partner incentives, and capture mechanics.
  • Ability to engage credibly with technical, product, and business stakeholders across multiple organizations.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable contributing to capture artifacts and executive-level discussions.
  • Strategic mindset paired with a bias toward execution in a fast-moving, early-stage environment.
  • High ownership, autonomy, and comfort operating with ambiguity.
  • Team Player
  • U.S. citizenship or permanent residency required (due to the nature of our work with the Department of Defense)
Responsibilities
  • Strategic Partnership Development: Identify, evaluate, and establish strategic relationships with engineering tool providers, data platforms, and adjacent technology partners (e.g., CAD/CAE, digital engineering, security, observability, data infrastructure). Build executive and working-level relationships across partner organizations, including BD, product, and technical leadership. Define partnership models spanning teaming agreements, joint solutions, go-to-market alignment, and long-term platform integration. Define metrics for joint-GTM motions and track contribution to revenue growth.
  • Federal Teaming & Capture Support: Support Federal capture teams by developing teaming strategies aligned to specific programs, agencies, and mission needs. Shape partner-inclusive value propositions that clearly articulate Istari’s differentiated role within broader solution stacks. Contribute to capture planning, whitepapers, RFI/RFP responses, and oral strategies where partner alignment is critical. Help identify incumbents, competitors, and ecosystem gaps within target programs and advise on optimal teaming configurations.
  • Joint Value Proposition & Solution Strategy: Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Solution Architects to define how partner technologies integrate with Istari’s platform. Translate technical integrations into compelling narratives around mission impact, program risk reduction, and operational outcomes. Ensure partner positioning reinforces Istari as foundational digital engineering infrastructure—not a point solution.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Federal Account Executives, BD, and Sales Leadership to align partnerships with active pursuits and pipeline. Provide market, partner, and competitive insights to Product and Engineering to inform roadmap priorities. Coordinate with Marketing and Sales Enablement on partner messaging, collateral, and field readiness (as needed).
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience partnering with or selling alongside engineering tool vendors (CAD/CAE, PLM, digital engineering, security, data infrastructure).
  • Familiarity with digital engineering, model-based systems engineering (MBSE), or engineering data workflows.
  • Prior experience supporting major defense primes, system integrators, or large federal programs.
  • Background in aerospace, defense, or national security technology ecosystems.

Istari Digital builds a platform to create an engineering metaverse for design, testing, and certification of physical systems entirely through modeling and simulation. It enables digital twins and digital threads—integrated models that trace a system’s lifecycle—so assets can go from concept to certifiable hardware without physical prototyping. The platform supports model-based engineering and cross-team collaboration to validate assets in a virtual environment before building them, with leadership from defense and government-experienced founders. The goal is to speed hardware development to software-like pace while enabling verifiable virtual testing and airworthiness certification across aerospace, defense, and related industries, reducing time, cost, and environmental impact.

Company Size

51-200

Company Stage

Seed

Total Funding

$13M

Headquarters

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Founded

2022

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Air Force contracts validate demand for digital engineering across defense workflows.[1]
  • Industry Øne addresses fragmented supplier collaboration without centralizing sensitive data.[5]
  • Dgraph strengthens graph-based AI and digital-thread relationships for engineering knowledge graphs.[5]

What critics are saying

  • Siemens, Dassault, and Ansys already own adjacent simulation and MBSE buying relationships.[1][3]
  • Defense procurement cycles are slow, and data-sharing resistance stretches adoption timelines.[4][5]
  • Flyer Øne failure would weaken Istari’s flagship digital-certification thesis and credibility.[1][5]

What makes Istari Digital unique

  • Secure, decentralized engineering data keeps owners controlling access and modification.[5]
  • Model, simulation, and team workflows connect live from source across clearances.[5]
  • Istari targets digital certification, not generic digital-twin visualization, through Flyer Øne.[1][5]

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Benefits

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

Life Insurance

Flexible Work Hours

Unlimited Paid Time Off

401k

Company Stock Options

Home Office Stipend

Conferences Attendance Budget

Reimbursement for approved trainings and subscriptions

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-7%

1 year growth

-5%

2 year growth

-8%
voco Hotels by IHG
May 26th, 2026
AWS vet Mark Ryland joins Istari Digital to lead AI push.

AWS vet Mark Ryland joins Istari Digital to lead AI push. 5h ago · 0:00 listen · Source: PR Newswire Summary. Mark Ryland has joined Istari Digital as Vice President of Artificial Intelligence. He is a 30-year veteran in cloud security and enterprise software. Ryland previously spent 14 years at Amazon Web Services, where he built AWS Worldwide Public Sector as Chief Solutions Architect. He also served eight years with AWS Security as Founder and Director, Office of the CISO. Earlier in his career, he worked at Microsoft for 13 years in senior roles. Istari Digital focuses on secure AI agent infrastructure for industries where failure is not an option, such as aerospace and defense. The company aims to solve the challenge of making AI agents safe across security boundaries and organizations that cannot easily share data. Will Roper, CEO of Istari Digital, states that Ryland will lead the company's AI work. Ryland believes the next generation of AI will be pioneered in solving hard infrastructure problems to preserve trust, control, and accountability as AI operates in real mission environments. This development matters because it highlights efforts to create secure and trustworthy AI systems for critical sectors. This is an AI-generated audio summary. Always check the original source for complete reporting.

PR Newswire
Feb 27th, 2026
US Air Force awards $8.6M to Istari Digital for defence industry data collaboration platform

The US Department of the Air Force has awarded an $8.6 million contract to Istari Digital to establish Industry Øne, an initiative aimed at accelerating digital transformation across the Defence Industrial Base. The programme addresses fragmented IT environments and incompatible tools that currently hinder collaboration amongst thousands of defence suppliers. Industry Øne enables secure, policy-enforced access to engineering data without centralising or copying it outside the owner's control. The platform allows organisations to maintain their own firewalls and data sovereignty whilst models interact through controlled interfaces, supporting real-time collaboration and continuous integration. The initiative builds on successful predecessors including Flyer Øne and Model Øne. Istari CEO Will Roper, former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, said the platform provides the infrastructure the defence industry has been missing.

PR Newswire
Oct 23rd, 2025
Istari Digital Acquires Dgraph for AI

Istari Digital has acquired Dgraph, an open-source graph database software, from Hypermode, Inc. This acquisition aims to enhance Istari's data foundation for AI and engineering by leveraging Dgraph's capabilities in managing complex relationships at scale with native GraphQL support. Dgraph is designed for AI-native workflows, making it suitable for applications like knowledge graphs, recommendation engines, and AI agent memory.

Silverwood Partners
Jan 15th, 2025
Technology Private Placement and M&A Transactions Review Week Ending Jan 12, 2025

Istari Digital: The company raised $27 million of venture funding from undisclosed investors on January 8, 2025.

UAS Vision
Aug 23rd, 2024
Istari Digital Unveils X-Plane To Become World's First Digitally-Certified Aircraft

Last year, the United States Air Force awarded Istari Digital a $19 million contract to pioneer this ambitious program, aptly named Flyer Øne in homage to the Wright Brothers.