Co-founder, Federal Sales
Lead federal sales for the IL5 sovereign AI stack. Material co-founder equity. Pre-revenue. Technical substrate already shipped.
About Thornveil
Thornveil LLC is a defense-AI infrastructure company building a federal IL5 sovereign AI stack: Mycelium (distributed inference mesh, v1.0.0 cosign-signed), RigRun (classification-gated AI chat, IL5-pathway, 496K LOC across desktop/mobile/web on one Go backend), and Auspex (AI red team gated by Signet, EAR ECCN 4D004, validated end-to-end on autonomous Active Directory takeover with auditable replay). Together these three systems form a narratively-coherent IL5-pathway AI stack that a federal program office can procure as one integrated capability in FY27.
Behind the trio sit seven more production-grade systems (Signet, Alchemist, Pyros, HawkStack, Meridian, Canopy, Navigator) covering capability-based safety gates, memory-safe Rust autopilot firmware, sub-million-parameter perception across 6 domains, multi-modal counter-UAS, and internal AI ops. All 10 systems are visible at github.com/thornveil-ai with public companion repositories for evaluator review.
Founder Jesse Morgan (Staff Sergeant, USMC SIGINT) shipped all 10 systems solo over five months while active-duty. DD-214: December 10, 2026 — direct federal contracts open then. The technical substrate is shipped. The federal sales motion is not. That gap is the co-founder seat.
Verify the substrate
Pull a repo. Read the source.
Verify the work before deciding to take the seat. The public companion repositories are organized for evaluator review.
Auspex — autonomous AD takeover with auditable replay
EAR ECCN 4D004Federal-gated. Single-page public contact. Replay package available under evaluation NDA. Scope-as-code + 13-check Signet gate + HMAC-chained per-engagement audit.
Mycelium — substitute-on-failure mesh, customer engagement active
v1.0.0 · cosign-signedR2I-aligned MOSA surface. NIST 800-53 mapped. 50-endpoint OpenAPI 3.1 published. Day-27 cryptographic reduction-to-practice with HMAC-chained tamper-evident audit log.
RigRun — IL5-pathway AI chat, type-system-enforced classification gate
496K LOC · 6,950 testsThree apps (desktop, mobile, web) on one Go backend. 44 NIST 800-53 controls implemented as discrete code paths. CUI+ hard-blocked from cloud routing at the compiler, not at runtime policy.
Signet — Apache-2.0 capability-based safety gate
PyPI public OSSThe vocabulary Auspex extends. 4-stage check pipeline. 11 production checks. HMAC-chained audit log. RFC 3161 trusted-timestamp anchoring. Public bug-hunt log documenting every cycle.
The Role
Responsibilities
You are the second co-founder. You own the federal sales motion end-to-end. Day-to-day responsibilities:
Land 2-4 signed federal pilots across the IL5 trio (Auspex / Mycelium / RigRun) over the first 12 months post-DD-214.
Build a customer board of 5-8 program-office relationships that do not depend on the founder being in the room.
Navigate IL5 / FedRAMP-Mod / ECCN authorization cycles with the right sponsor at each step.
Set commercial vs federal portfolio strategy across the broader 10-system portfolio.
Lead procurement-vehicle selection per opportunity (SBIR Phase I/II/III, OTA, BAA, CSO, CRADA, IDIQ).
Recruit operator-credibility hires when they are needed. Likely first hire: Director of Federal Sales or COO at the 18-month mark.
Required
Required qualifications
These are hard requirements, not preferences. If you are within striking distance of most of them, apply — exceptions are made for exceptional candidates who bring something material we did not anticipate.
- Roughly 8+ years operational experience at one of: MARFORCYBER, USCYBERCOM (J3), NSA TAO, IC red team, FBI Cyber Division, USAF 24th MOS, or peer organization. Senior NCO or O-grade typical; exceptional shorter-tenured candidates considered.
- Active TS/SCI clearance, or recent eligibility within the last 24 months. SCI-eligible at minimum.
- Post-uniform experience at a defense-AI startup (founding employee or early hire), fractional CRO/CSO across multiple defense AI startups, or corporate development at a defense prime's AI division (Booz Allen, SAIC, Leidos, GDIT, MITRE). Equivalent experience considered.
- At least one closed federal AI contract (won or lost) under FedRAMP, IL5, or ECCN scrutiny. You can articulate exactly why the outcome happened and what you would do differently.
- Material federal Rolodex: program-office contacts who will answer when you call, distributed across some combination of SOCOM, USCYBERCOM, DARPA (I2O preferred), AFRL, AvMC, NSA, CISA, or the DoD AI Safety Institute.
- Proven ability to translate technical capability into procurement-language wins. Comfortable with SBIR, OTA, BAA, CSO, CRADA, IDIQ.
Preferred
Preferred qualifications
Useful but not required. Candidates with multiple of these get priority.
- Direct experience as buyer or seller in AI red team programs (relevant to Auspex).
- Familiarity with R2I / MOSA compliance frameworks.
- Prior pre-seed or seed-stage co-founder experience.
- Working knowledge of one or more program offices: Replicator, FS-LIDS, NAVSEA USV-counter-USV, SOCPAC R2I, or DoD AISI evaluator pipeline.
- Operator-side credibility in adversarial AI safety (red team, threat hunt, capability evaluation).
- Federal acquisition certification (FAC-C, DAWIA Level II+) is a plus, not required.
Compensation & Terms
What the seat looks like
About the founder
Who you would be co-founding with
Eight years active duty. Six countries. 1,400+ national-level intelligence reports produced. BA in Arabic, Defense Language Institute.
Built Thornveil's 10-system portfolio solo from January 2026 forward — 1.3M LOC across Go, Rust, Python, TypeScript, and Dart in five months while active-duty. Engineering velocity verifiable at github.com/thornveil-ai. DD-214: December 10, 2026.
More at /about. References available on request.
How to apply
Send the email.
Subject: Co-founder application
In the body, include:
- 01 The federal programs you have worked, and on which side of the table.
- 02 One customer relationship you would convert in the first 90 days, and which Thornveil system you would lead with.
- 03 One thing in this job description that gave you pause, and how you would address it if hired.
1-2 paragraphs is plenty. No resume needed at first contact; we will request it if the initial response is a fit.
Responses within 48 hours. Initial conversation is a 30-min call. Target first contact to handshake: 4-6 weeks.
Thornveil LLC is an equal-opportunity employer. Selection is based on qualifications, fit, and ability to execute the role.