Product Owner – Optical Terminal Guidance (Seeker) Module in Port Melbourne, Victoria at Arkeus

About Arkeus

Arkeus is a world leader in the provision of wide-area autonomous optical search systems in the Search, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance space for Defence, Civil Defence and Environmental Sustainment applications. We specialise in the design, fabrication, manufacture and distribution of these innovative systems.

Backed by the billion-dollar deep-tech and industry expert investors Main Sequence, Beaten Zone Venture Partners, and Salus Ventures we are scaling the deployment of our next-generation hardware-enabled software platform to help our customers improve security and save lives.

We are a small yet fast-growing company with energy, passion and ambition. Our inclusive, transparent and merit-based culture focuses on building a diverse and capable workforce - one that attracts skilled individuals who share our purpose and values.

About the role:

This is a rare opportunity to own a product at the core of a munitions platform, specifically the seeker module responsible for detection, classification, and guidance.

You will own the product lifecycle from integration through adoption and into service, ensuring reliability across demanding operational environments where modularity, autonomous operation, and self-adaptation are essential.

As Product Owner, you will define requirements, represent customer needs to engineering, and drive qualification, platform integration, and sustainment.

You will work across a complex stakeholder environment, partnering with internal engineering and manufacturing teams, platform OEMs, systems integrators, acquisition authorities, and end users.

Success in this role requires someone equally comfortable engaging a defence program office, influencing senior stakeholders, and working directly with engineers to solve technical challenges.

About you:

• You bring deep understanding of the defence ecosystem, whether through military service, defence industry, or adjacent operational environments.
• You understand how defence capability is acquired, integrated, qualified, and sustained, and can bridge the gap between documented requirements and real operational needs.
• You are technically literate and capable of challenging trade-offs, translating customer requirements into engineering outcomes, and identifying downstream integration risks.
• You build trust across organisational boundaries and are confident engaging with defence stakeholders, OEMs, program offices, and internal technical teams.
• You take ownership, operate with high accountability, and thrive in complex, mission-critical environments.

Key responsibilities:

Product Definition and Strategy

• Own the product roadmap for a modular, autonomous seeker module across its full lifecycle — from integration through adoption and into service.

• Define and maintain product requirements that satisfy operational needs across multiple platform variants and customer defence establishments.

• Establish and drive the modularity and self-adaptation architecture as a product discipline — ensuring it is preserved through design decisions, interface agreements, and configuration management.

• Prioritise the product backlog in collaboration with engineering, balancing customer commitments, platform integration timelines, and technical capability.

Platform Interoperability and Interface Management

• Manage the technical and commercial interface between the seeker capabilities and platform OEMs.

• Own the interface control documentation and drive agreement on integration standards with partner organisations.

• Identify integration risk early and maintain a clear picture of what each platform requires relative to current product capability.

• Represent product interface requirements in joint working groups, technical interchange meetings, and program reviews.

Stakeholder Engagement — Internal and External

• Serve as the primary customer-facing representative for the product across defence acquisition programs, platform primes, and end-user commands.

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with program offices, platform integrators, and in-service support authorities across AUKUS and partner nations.

• Translate customer and operator requirements into actionable product direction for internal engineering, manufacturing, and test teams.

• Represent the product at industry forums, defence events, and customer engagement activities as a credible technical and operational voice.

Adoption and In-Service Support

• Drive platform adoption through integration qualification, acceptance, and entry-to-service milestones.

• Work with manufacturing and logistics to ensure supportability requirements are embedded in product design from the outset.

• Maintain ongoing dialogue with in-service users to capture operational feedback and feed it into product evolution.

• Support the development of training, maintenance documentation, and operator guidance appropriate to the operating context.

Commercial and Business Development Contribution

• Contribute to capture strategy and proposal development where product capability is a competitive differentiator.

• Support pricing, configuration, and through-life cost modelling for OEM supply agreements.

• Identify new platform integration opportunities and assess feasibility against current and roadmap capability.

Your experience and skills:

• Prior military service in a relevant domain — air, maritime, or land platforms with direct exposure to munitions, systems integration, or guided weapons strongly preferred.

• Deep familiarity with defence acquisition processes, program office structures, and the requirements development and acceptance testing cycle in at least one AUKUS nation.

• Demonstrated experience in a product management, systems engineering, or technical program management role within a defence OEM, prime contractor, or defence-adjacent environment.

• Technical literacy at the systems level — sufficient to engage meaningfully with interface control, functional requirements, environmental qualification, and platform integration constraints.

• Proven ability to manage relationships across multiple external organisations simultaneously, including platform OEMs, prime contractors, and government acquisition authorities.

• Experience taking a hardware or hardware-enabled product through integration qualification and into operational service with a defence customer.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills — able to produce and present clear product documentation, briefings, and requirements artefacts appropriate to defence audiences.

• Demonstrated ability to operate across the full product lifecycle, from early requirements definition through to in-service sustainment.

• A tertiary qualification in engineering, science, or a related technical discipline; a postgraduate qualification in program management, systems engineering, or defence studies is well regarded.

• Commercial awareness and the ability to contribute substantively to business development, OEM supply negotiations, and through-life cost discussions.

What we offer:

• The knowledge that your work sits inside systems trusted and used by AUKUS defence customers.

• A role that defines what is possible in Australian deep-tech — complex, fast-paced and genuinely novel.

• Direct influence on the technical direction of a growing company backed by world-class investors.

• Leadership of the most technically ambitious team in the business.

• Close collaboration with highly experienced leaders across Defence, aerospace and research.

• Direct access to executive leadership, with a clear path to broader organisational influence as Arkeus scales.

• An inclusive, high-trust environment where diversity is a genuine value and merit and contribution are what matter.

• Workplace flexibility and a strong focus on sustainable high performance.

• Executive-level participation in our Employee Share Option Plan — Arkeus has been on an exponential revenue and headcount trajectory for several years, and this is a compelling time to hold a meaningful stake in where the company is going.

• The opportunity to shape Arkeus' next phase of growth — and your own career alongside it.

If this sounds like you, please apply even if you don't check every box listed above and join our growing team in improving security and saving lives!