Key Takeaways
- Aerospace and defense organizations are broadening executive hiring criteria as software becomes a larger part of competitive advantage.
- The strongest leadership candidates now combine defense operating experience with meaningful software and technology leadership backgrounds.
For decades, the requirements for senior aerospace and defense roles were relatively stable. Engineering depth, program execution, government contracting experience, and regulatory knowledge formed the foundation of most searches. Organizations knew what they were looking for, and the candidate pool knew how to prepare for it.
The industry around those requirements has changed significantly, and hiring is starting to reflect that.
Software Is Becoming a Core Defense Capability
The biggest shift in aerospace and defense over the past five years is not a new weapons platform or aircraft program. It is software.
Projects like the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program illustrate this clearly. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, and Anduril are competing for a contract to produce AI-piloted aircraft, with autonomous decision-making at the center of what each team is proposing. The capability being evaluated is primarily a software problem.
Government customers are reinforcing this shift from their side as well. Defense agencies increasingly expect software capabilities to evolve throughout a program's lifecycle, with updates and improvements delivered far more frequently than traditional hardware-focused development models allowed.
US spending on AI and generative AI in aerospace and defense is expected to reach $5.8 billion by 2029, more than three times its 2025 level. Investment at that scale signals that software has moved from a supporting capability to a core one across how defense programs are built and delivered.
As that shift deepens, the executive profile for running defense organizations is expanding beyond what traditional program management and engineering backgrounds reliably produce.
Dual-Use Technology Is Reshaping the Talent Pool
A parallel shift is happening in where defense innovation originates. Venture-backed defense technology companies have grown substantially in scale and influence. Defense tech startups raised $49.1 billion in 2025, nearly double the $27.2 billion raised the year before, with companies like Anduril at a $30.5 billion valuation and Helsing at €12 billion (approximately $14 billion) leading a wave of AI-powered autonomous systems development.
Many of the organizations driving this investment were built by people from commercial technology backgrounds. Anduril's founding team came primarily from Palantir and Oculus. The company's approach, combining low-cost hardware with sophisticated software, reflected a product development philosophy that had little precedent in traditional defense contracting.
That pattern is visible at the CEO level as well. In 2025, Shield AI appointed Gary Steele as its chief executive. Steele spent more than 30 years in enterprise software, founding Proofpoint and later leading Splunk, where he grew revenue 58% before its $28 billion sale to Cisco. He had no prior defense industry background. Shield AI's board selected him because the company's next phase of growth required software scaling experience, and the board was explicit about that being the primary criterion.
As dual-use technology becomes a larger share of what the defense industrial base produces, the executives with directly relevant experience are increasingly coming from commercial technology companies, and defense organizations are having to compete for them on terms they were not designed for.
Executive Hiring Is Expanding Beyond Traditional Backgrounds
Program delivery, government procurement, regulatory compliance, and security clearance experience remain essential in most senior roles. Organizations that underweight those criteria in a search tend to discover the gap quickly once a candidate is in the seat.
What is shifting is that those credentials are increasingly paired with expectations that were absent from the standard profile five years ago. Mandates for chief technology officers, VP of Engineering, VP of AI, and VP of Product roles in defense organizations now routinely include software leadership experience, familiarity with AI-enabled systems, and the ability to manage cross-functional teams that span both engineering and business functions.
A Deloitte analysis of aerospace and defense job postings found that the percentage requiring data analysis skills is projected to increase from 9% in 2025 to nearly 14% by 2028. Data science and machine learning skills are among the fastest-growing requirements across the industry over the same period. The posting data reflects how hiring managers are actually defining the roles they need to fill, and the direction is consistent.
The strongest candidates combine defense operating experience with meaningful software leadership exposure. Defense operating credibility combined with genuine technology depth is what separates a competitive profile from the rest of the field.
Boards and Investors Are Shaping These Decisions
Boards and investors are increasingly influencing executive searches as software becomes a larger share of enterprise value in aerospace and defense companies. Leadership decisions that once centered on program delivery now also affect technology strategy, AI adoption, cybersecurity posture, and long-term competitiveness.
As a result, hiring discussions at the senior level are moving beyond succession planning and becoming part of broader business strategy. Boards that previously left executive search entirely to management are asking more pointed questions about how a CTO candidate thinks about software architecture and what relevant operating experience a Chief Digital Officer brings from outside the defense sector.
What Organizations Evaluate Differently Today
The criteria appearing in executive briefs have shifted in ways that are now visible across a range of role types. The table below reflects how evaluation priorities have evolved, particularly for technology-facing roles at prime contractors and defense technology companies.
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These shifts are most pronounced in roles with direct technology ownership. VP of Engineering, SVP of Technology, and Chief Digital Officer searches now consistently include evaluation criteria that would have been peripheral or absent in the same searches a decade ago.
Competition for Talent Looks Different
Aerospace and defense organizations have always competed for a narrow pool of cleared, credentialed, senior professionals. That competition has become more complicated as the field of competitors has widened.
Anduril alone added more than 1,000 employees in nine months and now employs over 6,200 people. Palantir, Shield AI, and Saronic raised more than $7 billion in the last 18 months combined, pulling software engineers, machine learning researchers, and experienced technology executives out of enterprise software, cybersecurity, and AI companies.
For SVP and VP roles that require both technology depth and defense operating knowledge, the pool of candidates who genuinely hold both remains narrow. And traditional defense organizations are now competing for those people against companies offering different equity arrangements, faster product cycles, and less procedural overhead.
The Clearance Constraint
One factor that separates defense hiring from most other executive searches is the security clearance requirement. Many strong technology leaders from commercial backgrounds are eligible for a clearance but have never held one. That gap extends hiring timelines significantly, and in some cases removes otherwise well-qualified candidates from consideration entirely.
The clearance process can take months to complete, which means an organization that identifies the right candidate still faces a substantial delay before that person can begin working on classified programs. For searches where clearance is required from day one, the practical candidate pool is considerably smaller than the total pool of executives who meet the technical and leadership criteria.
Defense organizations that compete effectively for technology talent have started accounting for this constraint earlier in the process. The ones that consistently close the candidates they want treat clearance timing as part of the search design from the start, not a detail to resolve after an offer is made.
Looking Ahead
The next generation of senior aerospace and defense leaders will come from more varied backgrounds than previous generations did. The strongest profiles will combine defense operating knowledge with technology credentials that were not traditionally part of the career path into senior defense leadership.
A Deloitte forecast projects that by 2029, AI investment in the sector will be more than three times its 2025 level. At that pace of technology change, organizations that broaden how they define qualified candidates will have access to a deeper pool than those measuring against criteria built for a different version of the industry.
The core of what has always mattered in defense executive hiring, the ability to deliver complex programs, earn trust across government and industry relationships, and operate under regulatory and security constraints, remains the foundation. The organizations adapting fastest are expanding those criteria to reflect how the industry itself is changing.
Questions We Hear From Executive Teams
- Why is executive hiring changing in aerospace and defense?
The industry's technology base has shifted faster than most hiring processes have. Software, AI, and autonomous systems have moved from peripheral capabilities to central ones in how defense organizations compete for contracts and deliver programs. As those capabilities become more important operationally, the profile of who can lead organizations that build them has had to expand.
- How has software changed what organizations look for in a CTO or VP of Engineering?
Running a software-intensive defense program requires a different operating instinct than managing a hardware program, even a highly complex one. Decisions about architecture, continuous deployment, model performance, and engineering organization require someone who has made those calls before in a production environment. Many of the most qualified candidates for these roles now come from backgrounds that would not have been competitive in the same search five years ago.
- What is dual-use technology and why does it matter for senior hiring?
Dual-use technology refers to systems developed for commercial applications that also have direct defense relevance, including autonomous vehicles, AI decision support tools, cybersecurity infrastructure, and satellite communications. As more of what the defense industrial base produces is built on those foundations, the executives with the most directly applicable experience often come from commercial technology companies.
- How do security clearances affect executive search timelines?
Clearances add meaningful time to any search where classified access is required from the start. A candidate who meets every other criterion but has never held a clearance may face a process that takes several months before they can fully assume their responsibilities. Organizations that plan for that timeline, including structuring roles to allow productive work during the clearance period, tend to close searches faster and retain candidates who might otherwise withdraw.
- Which roles are most affected by these changes?
Chief technology officer and VP of Engineering mandates are seeing the most significant shift in how evaluation criteria are written. Chief digital officer and VP of AI searches are newer in many organizations and are being defined almost entirely outside traditional defense frameworks. Program executive roles are also evolving in organizations where software delivery has become as operationally significant as hardware integration.
How Christian & Timbers Approaches These Searches
Christian & Timbers has completed more than 150 searches for senior technology and executive leadership across aerospace, defense, and enterprise software. The most effective searches typically begin with a clearly defined mandate that reflects both what the organization needs from a defense operating standpoint and what the role actually requires from a technology standpoint.
In practice, that means defining the role requirements upfront instead of uncovering missing criteria as candidates move through the process. For CTO, VP of Engineering, SVP of Technology, VP of AI, VP of Product, and Chief Digital Officer roles in defense-adjacent organizations, those requirements often lead to different candidate pools. The search strategy depends on understanding which problem the organization is actually trying to solve.
Recent aerospace and defense placements include a CTO search for a European aerostructures and engine systems manufacturer, where the mandate called for an AI-native technology leader with experience operating in regulated industrial environments. The search closed in 10 weeks. Within 12 months, the company had deployed AI across engineering and manufacturing workflows, reducing certification documentation time by up to 40% and manufacturing costs by 5% to 15% in targeted areas.
Christian & Timbers also placed the CFO at Ursa Major during the company's transition from R&D into scaled production. Over the following year, Ursa Major secured $163 million in funding, expanded manufacturing capacity, and delivered dozens of rocket engines to government and commercial customers.
If your organization is defining or redefining a senior technology role in aerospace or defense, our team is happy to work through the mandate with you.
