General Manager - Special Projects

General Manager - Special Projects

Merlin is a venture backed aerospace startup building a non-human pilot to enable both reduced crew and uncrewed flight. Backed by some of the world's leading investors, Merlin is scaling alongside our customers to begin leveraging autonomy today to solve some of aviation's biggest challenges.

This is a seat for someone who's scrappy, analytical, and execution-obsessed — the kind of operator who can move from first principles to full delivery. You'll work across engineering, program, and product to validate opportunities and deliver results that expand Merlin's reach into new markets.

Merlin is defining a new category of aviation through autonomy. The Special Projects team sits at the tip of the spear — where new ideas meet real aircraft, real customers, and real revenue. You'll turn emerging opportunities into scalable programs that shape how autonomy takes flight.

Responsibilities:

• Lead discovery and execution of projects to advance the Merlin product roadmap — including development, testing, developing partnerships, and testing business models that push Merlin into new markets.
• Identify, analyze, and validate new customer use cases; build hypotheses, run pilots, and define go-to-market paths.
• Translate technical capabilities into commercial opportunities with clear value, economics, and operational plans.
• Build financial and strategic models to inform investment decisions and scaling strategies.
• Lead small, cross-functional teams through concept, prototype, and operational delivery.
• Manage a portfolio of early-stage initiatives; track milestones, risk, and success metrics.
• Build external relationships with customers, partners, and strategic stakeholders to accelerate adoption.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years in strategy, product, or operating roles — ideally in frontier tech, defense, aerospace, or autonomy.
• Experience as a founder, chief of staff, or "Office of the CEO" operator with a bias toward action and high ownership.
• Proven ability to take ambiguous problems, frame opportunities, and drive results end-to-end.
• Strong analytical toolkit: market sizing, business modeling, and hypothesis-driven strategy.
• Comfortable navigating technical, operational, and commercial conversations — and translating between them.
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, with credibility in front of senior leadership and external partners.
• Bonus: experience in autonomy, mobility, aerospace, or dual-use technology commercialization.

Merlin Labs offers an innovative, entrepreneurial, and team-focused startup environment. We also offer a top-notch benefits package (health, dental, life, unlimited vacation, and 401k with match) and work/life integration. Being part of the Merlin team allows you to become part of a small team that supports professional development while working together to achieve our mission.

Merlin Labs is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status. All job offers are contingent upon the candidate passing background, and reference checks.

At this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or consider candidates who require visa transfers. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future.

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing an application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to people@merlinlabs.com.

Merlin Labs does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from candidates.