About the Role

Director of Strategic Finance and Programs

About Merlin:

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.

*MUST HAVE EXPERIENCE WORKING WITH US GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS

You are an experienced finance professional who wants to contribute to making airplanes that fly themselves. You are familiar with research & development projects, particularly with the US government, and have built a career establishing financial budgets, monitoring program activities against those budgets, and partnering with the program leadership to help them stay on track. You enjoy having a seat at the decision making table and can effectively present your points with clarity but also with positivity and optimism; you will bring solutions and ideas not problems and blame. You know how to use industry standard tools for your work and have a passion for stretching the capabilities from those tools to reduce or eliminate non-value manual work as much as possible. You’re focused on advancing your career as demonstrated through a track record of consistently upward mobility.

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About the Company

Merlin Labs

Merlin Labs is a leading U.S.-based developer of AI-powered, autonomous flight technology designed to bring takeoff-to-touchdown autonomy to both legacy and next-generation aircraft. Their flagship product, the Merlin Pilot, translates the skills of a human pilot into software, enabling aircraft to operate autonomously across a wide range of missions and platforms, including tankers, transports, turboprops, rotorcraft, and uncrewed systems. Merlin’s technology is aircraft-agnostic and is being deployed in both civil and military aviation, with a focus on rigorous testing, certification, and integration with air traffic control systems. The company has logged over 800 hours of autonomous flight and is advancing toward full certification, with test facilities in the U.S. and New Zealand.

People interested in working at Merlin Labs will appreciate the company’s mission-driven culture and its position at the forefront of aviation innovation. Merlin is trusted by leading industry investors, governments, and regulators, and has secured over $100 million in awarded contracts from military customers. The company is rapidly growing, with a team of more than 100 experts in AI and certified aviation software, and is preparing for a public listing in early 2026. Employees have the opportunity to contribute to groundbreaking advancements in autonomous flight, work alongside top talent, and help shape the future of national security and civil aviation through safe, reliable, and scalable autonomy solutions.

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