Rocio Bauer’s profile over at WashingtonExec is worth your time if you’re thinking about what leadership looks like when you’re serving the Army through technology. The through-line matters: it’s not about the tech stack or the latest platform—it’s about understanding the mission first, then building or buying accordingly.
I see this gap all the time in searches. A candidate can map an enterprise architecture in their sleep, hold the right clearance, and still miss the job because they lead with solutions instead of questions. The best technology executives I place in the federal space—especially Army and DoD—know how to translate warfighter requirements into execution without losing sight of constraints: budget cycles, security frameworks, and the humans who’ll actually use the system downrange.
If you’re a technologist eyeing a senior role in defense, spend less time polishing your résumé’s bullet points and more time articulating how you’ve served a mission that wasn’t yours to define. That’s the filter.