Founder (gn) @ Maritime Defence Technology, Germany

Founder & CEO – Maritime Defence Technology

Europe needs new maritime capabilities. Europe's security, energy infrastructure, and economic resilience depend on the maritime domain.

Yet vast areas of the sea remain difficult to monitor, understand, and protect. Critical infrastructure is increasingly distributed, underwater activity is becoming harder to track, and the systems used across maritime defence were largely designed for a different era. At the same time, a new generation of technologies is becoming available. Advances in AI, autonomy, sensing, edge computing, and low-cost hardware are making it possible to build entirely new kinds of maritime systems. We believe this creates an opportunity to build an important new defence technology company. We're assembling the founding team around a thesis focused on maritime and subsea systems, and we're looking for the founder who wants to lead it.

The Opportunity

This is not a role inside an existing company. There is no organisation to inherit, no roadmap to execute against, and no legacy technology to maintain. Instead, there is an opportunity to build a company from first principles around one of the most important and underexplored areas in European defence technology. The exact product will be shaped with the founding team, but our conviction is clear: maritime and subsea environments are becoming strategically more important, while advances in software and intelligent systems are creating entirely new ways to operate within them. The company that successfully combines deep customer understanding with exceptional technology execution has the potential to become a critical supplier to governments and allied organisations across Europe.

Who We're Looking For

We're looking for a founder first. You may be an engineer, product leader, operator, researcher, defence professional, or entrepreneur.

You may come from a defence company, a maritime business, a robotics startup, a software company, a research institute, or a military background. What matters most is that you're capable of building and leading a company. You have strong technical instincts, a deep curiosity about complex systems, and the ambition to create something enduring. You understand how to recruit exceptional people, make decisions under uncertainty, and translate emerging technologies into products customers genuinely need.

Most importantly, you're motivated by building.

Not joining.

Building.

What You'll Do

As Founder & CEO, you'll work with Atlantic.vc from day zero to define the company.

You'll help shape:

• Product strategy and company vision

• Customer discovery and engagement

• Early technical direction

• Founding team recruitment

• Fundraising and company formation

• Go-to-market and long-term growth

You do not need to be the world's leading expert in subsea autonomy.

You do need the ability to learn quickly, attract exceptional talent, and lead a company through ambiguity.

What We Bring

Atlantic.vc is helping assemble and back the company from inception.

We provide:

• Pre-seed funding ready to deploy around the right founder

• Deep research and market intelligence

• Access to defence, maritime, and government stakeholders

• Support recruiting a world-class founding team

• Operational, strategic, and fundraising support

• A long-term partnership from company formation onwards

Location

Ideally you are able to join us in Berlin for some time to kick things off before you relocate to the strategically best location to launch this venture.

What This Is Not

This is not a job listing. We're not looking for an executive to manage someone else's company. We're looking for a founder.

Someone who wants to build a business around a real problem, recruit an exceptional team, and spend the next decade creating technology that matters. If that sounds more exciting than your current role, we'd love to talk.