About the role
Most careers today are optimized for comfort. We are interested in people optimized for the trajectory.
Before you read further: this is a working role, not a title to collect. "Executive Officer" here means the second pair of hands behind the Chief Business & Brand Officer — the person who drafts, chases, fixes, briefs, and owns the unglamorous problems nobody else has time for. Roughly 80% of it is doing the work yourself, not having other people do it for you. If proximity to power interests you more than responsibility, close this tab.
Destinus is a European defence manufacturer building scalable strike and air-defence systems for European and allied armed forces. At Destinus, engineering, autonomy, industrial scale, and European security collide. The pace is fast, the stakes are real, and nobody is here to manage your career for you.
We are looking for an Executive Officer who is not here for the title.
This is not an assistant role. This is not calendar management with better branding. This is not corporate coordination theatre.
This is an operator role.
You will work directly with the Chief Business & Brand Officer across business development, partnerships, communications, external positioning, strategic projects, events, research, and problem-solving.
Your mission is simple:
Create leverage. Remove friction. Help important things move faster.
One week, you may prepare a strategic briefing before a government meeting. The next, you may help coordinate a partnership discussion, support a media response, shape external communication, research a new market, prepare an event, or solve an operational problem that nobody else has time to own.
This role is for someone who wants to become unusually capable by taking responsibility for difficult problems that do not fit neatly into a job description.
What You´ll Do
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Own and drive strategic projects across business, brand, communications, partnerships, and external positioning
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Support business development initiatives, customer discussions, partner engagement, and market research
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Prepare briefings, memos, presentations, talking points, and follow-ups for senior-level meetings
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Help turn complex technical, commercial, and geopolitical information into clear decisions and communication
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Coordinate high-priority work across teams, countries, and functions
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Identify problems early and push solutions to completion
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Represent the office in selected meetings and ensure actions actually happen
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Help prepare events, press moments, external engagements, and stakeholder interactions
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Build structure where there is chaos, without waiting for someone else to invent the process
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Act as a force multiplier for the Chief Business & Brand Officer
Requirements
What You’ll Need
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Own and drive strategic projects across business, brand, communications, partnerships, and external positioning
-
Support business development initiatives, customer discussions, partner engagement, and market research
-
Prepare briefings, memos, presentations, talking points, and follow-ups for senior-level meetings
-
Help turn complex technical, commercial, and geopolitical information into clear decisions and communication
-
Coordinate high-priority work across teams, countries, and functions
-
Identify problems early and push solutions to completion
-
Represent the office in selected meetings and ensure actions actually happen
-
Help prepare events, press moments, external engagements, and stakeholder interactions
-
Build structure where there is chaos, without waiting for someone else to invent the process
-
Act as a force multiplier for the Chief Business & Brand Officer
Who You Are
You are a builder.
Not an operator of old systems. Not a corporate coordinator. Not someone who is merely good at interviews.
You take responsibility before anyone gives it to you. You figure things out without supervision. You execute without drama. You stay coherent under pressure and ambiguity. You care about outcomes, not appearances.
You might be young. You might have a trail of things that failed. You might have zero experience in defence.
Fine.
You do not need to know everything. You need to learn absurdly fast.
The strongest candidates usually have a history of building things before anyone gave them permission: projects, companies, prototypes, communities, code, systems, campaigns, experiments. Anything.
We care about slope, not credentials. About output, not corporate fluency.
Nice to have
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Experience building something from scratch: a company, product, campaign, project, community, or system
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Exposure to business development, strategy, communications, entrepreneurship, consulting, operations, defence, aerospace, or deep tech
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Additional European languages
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Experience working close to founders, executives, or senior decision-makers
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Ability to read technical material and ask intelligent questions without pretending to understand everything
Do not apply if
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you mainly want the Executive Officer title
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you need a clean process before you can move
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you confuse meetings with progress
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you are more interested in proximity to power than responsibility
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you wait to be told exactly what to do
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your instinct in chaos is to ask who owns the problem, rather than helping solve it
Apply if
You want responsibility early.
You want to sit close to real decisions and earn that seat every day.
You are willing to look stupid for five minutes rather than stay ignorant for five months.
You can ask the dumb question, find the answer, write the memo, make the call, chase the follow-up, fix the slide, brief the meeting, and keep the work moving.
If you have never voluntarily taken responsibility for something slightly above your level, this probably will not be enjoyable.
If your first instinct in chaos is "someone should handle this," and your second instinct is "fine, I'll do it," you will probably fit in here.
How to apply
Do not send only a polished CV. Send something you built.
It can be a company, project, product, campaign, community, system, piece of writing, event, research memo, prototype, or anything else that proves you can turn initiative into reality.
In your application, include:
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What is the most difficult thing you have built?
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What did you personally own?
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Where did it fail or nearly fail?
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What did you learn?
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Why does this role make sense for you now?
No buzzwords. No theatre. Just evidence.
