Director of Discovery & Framing

About the role

Role Mission Own, lead, and scale Discovery & Framing at Defense Unicorns—help customers identify and clearly define the mission problems that matter, quantify their impact, establish what success looks like, and create the clarity needed to determine the right path forward. The Head of Discovery & Framing will lead the highest-priority customer engagements, establish the D&F methodology and quality standard, and build the team required to deliver the discipline at scale. The Role Defense Unicorns is creating a dedicated Discovery & Framing function to improve how we understand customer problems before moving into solution design. This is a senior, hands-on strategy role for someone who knows how to walk into an ambiguous customer situation, ask the questions others miss, separate symptoms from root causes, and turn a complex discussion into a clear and measurable mission problem. Trust is built by knowing the customer’s mission intimately—its language, operating tempo, constraints, failure modes, stakeholder pressures, and consequences of getting it wrong. The Head of D&F must be equally comfortable facilitating a working session with senior customer leaders, interviewing operators and technical stakeholders, analyzing what was learned, and producing a concise executive-quality output afterward. This is not a traditional sales role, product presentation role, or technical discovery role. Operating principle: Help the customer define and measure the right problem before asking them to choose a solution. What You Will Own Lead Discovery & Framing Engagements Prepare for and personally facilitate high-value D&F engagements with customer executives, mission leaders, operators, technical stakeholders, acquisition leaders, and other key participants. Lead the most strategic, complex, or ambiguous engagements while developing additional D&F practitioners to handle increasing volume. Build the Discovery & Framing Function Establish the D&F methodology, engagement model, playbook, question bank, templates, quality standards, and examples of what great looks like. Determine capacity requirements and build the D&F team as demand grows. Coach and develop D&F practitioners while remaining personally involved in important customer engagements. Start With a Hypothesis Work with the account team before each engagement to establish: What we believe we know What remains an assumption What we need to learn Who must participate What decision or next step the engagement needs to advance The hypothesis provides structure without predetermining the answer. Discover the Real Problem Move the customer conversation beyond the initial technical request to understand: The mission being performed Current state What is not working today Root causes Existing workarounds Constraints Who is affected Why the problem matters Why it matters now What happens if nothing changes Continue asking why until the team understands the underlying mission problem rather than simply the requested technology. Frame the Problem Turn discovery into a clear problem definition the customer recognizes as their own. Define: The mission problem Who experiences it Root causes Measurable impact Current workarounds Desired future state Consequences of inaction The gap between current and desired states The problem should be expressed in the customer’s language—not Defense Unicorns product language. Make the Impact Measurable Quantify the problem wherever possible using measures such as: Mission readiness Time Cost Operational risk Availability Deployment speed Reliability Workforce capacity Manual effort Delays Failure rates Mission outcomes Establish a baseline so the customer can determine whether the problem has actually been solved. Define Success Help the customer establish the outcomes and success criteria that indicate meaningful improvement. Answer two questions: What must change? How will we know it changed? Map the Decision System Identify the people and organizations involved in moving the problem toward action, including: Mission Influencer Mission Hero Buyer Requirements owner Funding owner Acquiring organization Technical stakeholders People who can advance the decision People who can block the decision Understand the relationships, incentives, concerns, and gaps among them. Expose the Path to Action Determine what must happen for the customer to act, including: Decision criteria Decision process Funding source Acquisition path Contracting path Competitive alternatives Status quo Organizational barriers Evidence still required Events creating urgency Timing constraints Own the Customer-Facing Output Every D&F engagement should result in a concise, customer-ready readout. The Head of D&F owns the quality of these outputs across the function. Each output should include: Validated mission problem Current state and root causes Quantified impact Current workarounds Consequences of inaction Desired future state Success criteria Stakeholder and buying map Decision criteria and process Funding and acquisition path Remaining evidence gaps Owners and dates Agreed mutual next step The output should be useful enough that the customer and account team can act on it immediately. Maintain Independence of Judgment Discovery & Framing is not a disguised product pitch. The D&F function objectively determines whether a meaningful problem exists, whether solving it matters, and whether Defense Unicorns has a credible role in helping address it. A successful D&F engagement may: Advance an opportunity Redirect an opportunity Identify additional discovery required Reveal that another problem should take priority Disqualify an opportunity The D&F Engagement A strong D&F engagement follows five stages: 1. Prepare Research the account, mission, technical environment, stakeholders, and opportunity context. Align with the account team on hypotheses, unknowns, participants, and objectives. 2. Discover Facilitate a customer-first conversation to understand the current state, mission, root problem, constraints, workarounds, stakeholders, and impact. Ask questions until evidence replaces assumptions. 3. Frame Turn what was discovered into a clear, measurable problem statement. Connect the problem to mission impact, desired outcomes, and consequences of inaction. 4. Validate Validate the problem framing with the customer. Test the problem, impact, urgency, baseline, desired outcomes, success criteria, stakeholder roles, decision criteria, and remaining assumptions. 5. Mobilize Deliver the customer readout and establish a dated mutual next step. Connect the problem to a Defense Unicorns capability only where there is a legitimate fit. How You Will Work Account Executive / Mission Seller: Owns the customer relationship, account and opportunity strategy, commercial process, and follow-through on agreed actions. Head of Discovery & Framing: Owns the D&F methodology, engagement preparation, facilitation, synthesis, customer-facing outputs, quality standards, team development, and capacity. Discovery & Framing Strategist: Supports and leads D&F engagements under the methodology and standards established by the Head of D&F. Conducts research, facilitates assigned engagements, analyzes findings, produces customer outputs, and maintains internal records. Solutions Engineer / Technical Lead: Owns technical discovery, architecture, feasibility, solution design, and technical validation once the mission problem and desired outcomes are sufficiently understood. Sales Leadership and Enablement: Reinforce adoption, qualification discipline, coaching, and follow-through. What You Bring Client-Facing Strategy Depth 8+ years of experience in strategy consulting, management consulting, customer strategy, value advisory, or another highly structured client-facing problem-solving environment. Meaningful experience at firms such as McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG, or a comparable strategy or advisory organization is highly valued. Executive Facilitation A strong record of personally leading executive interviews, workshops, diagnostic engagements, and cross-functional working sessions. Able to ask difficult questions respectfully, challenge assumptions, manage competing perspectives, and help senior stakeholders arrive at clarity. Structured Problem Solving Exceptional ability in: Hypothesis-led discovery Issue structuring Root-cause analysis Five Whys Stakeholder mapping Impact quantification Business and mission analysis Synthesis Executive communication Mission Intimacy and Translation Ability to rapidly learn and operate within the customer’s mission context. Trust requires more than knowing the technology. You learn the mission language, operating environment, organizational pressures, constraints, failure modes, and consequences of failure. You can translate across mission, operational, acquisition, business, and technical perspectives. Crisp Executive Communication Outstanding written and verbal communication with the ability to turn hours of complex customer discussion into a short, clear, defensible executive readout. Team-Building Leadership Experience building, scaling, or leading a consulting, strategy, advisory, professional services, or customer-facing team. You know how to establish a methodology, develop people, maintain quality, and determine when additional capacity is needed. Especially Valuable Experience working with complex, mission-driven organizations Experience operating in regulated or highly secure environments Acquisition and contracting fluency Familiarity with enterprise software, DevSecOps, cloud, cybersecurity, platform engineering, software delivery, or mission systems Experience connecting operational requirements to funding and acquisition Familiarity with MEDDPICC or another rigorous enterprise qualification methodology How Success Will Be Measured Better discovery: Customers validate that D&F accurate