--- title: 'Business Operations Associate at Albacore' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/business-operations-associate-albacore-philadelphia-vckesqh4fgn9' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-26' --- # Business Operations Associate at Albacore - **Company:** Albacore - **Location:** Philadelphia, PA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-10-01 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-26 - **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/albacore/am9icG9zdDq7-k_6wbgdPmbGKoG4_wwk ## Job description ## The Role We’re hiring a Business Operations Associate to help build the processes, systems, and operating discipline that support Albacore’s growth. You’ll work directly with the executive team and partner across engineering, finance, people, supply chain, and business development to solve business problems, develop proposals, and move important initiatives forward. This is a broad, hands-on role that combines analysis, writing, and execution. You might build a model to inform a resource decision, develop a customer proposal with technical leaders, or advise the executive team on an operational challenge. You should be comfortable turning incomplete information into clear recommendations and following through on implementation. The right person combines strong analytical and writing skills with the judgment, initiative, and discretion to work closely with senior leadership in an early-stage company. ## What You’ll Do - Advise the C-suite. Analyze business opportunities and operational challenges, evaluate tradeoffs, and present clear recommendations to inform strategic decisions. - Develop proposals. Write and coordinate customer and government proposals, including RFP and RFI responses, working with technical leaders to communicate Albacore’s capabilities and meet submission requirements. - Support business planning. Build financial models, budgets, resource forecasts, and reporting that connect company priorities to hiring, spending, and execution. - Own cross-functional projects. Lead initiatives from problem definition through implementation, aligning stakeholders, managing deadlines, and resolving roadblocks. - Improve operations. Build practical processes and systems across purchasing, vendor management, and internal workflows that help the company operate effectively as it grows. ## What You’ll Bring - 2+ years of experience in business operations, consulting, finance, or a similarly analytical and execution-focused role. - Strong analytical skills and proficiency in Excel or Google Sheets, with the ability to turn data into actionable recommendations. - Excellent writing and communication skills, including the ability to translate technical information into compelling proposals and concise executive materials. - Demonstrated ownership, sound judgment, and the ability to manage competing priorities with limited direction. ## Preferred Qualifications - Experience at an early-stage startup or growing technology company. - Exposure to hardware, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace, or defense. - Experience with budget tracking, workforce planning, procurement, or business systems implementation. - Familiarity with SQL, business intelligence tools, or workflow automation. - Experience building a new process or capability where no established approach existed. ## Why Albacore You’ll work directly with the people building the company and see the impact of your work across the business. This is an opportunity to take meaningful ownership early, develop a broad understanding of a maritime defense company, and help shape how Albacore operates as it grows. ## About Albacore ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Albacore Inc. builds mass-producible, long-range autonomous drone submarines (unmanned underwater vehicles) designed to support military operators with ocean-spanning, scalable undersea missions. - **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage) - **Headquarters**: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States - **Founded**: 2025 - **Founders**: John Huddleston (Co-Founder, mechanical engineer & unmanned systems expert) and Dante Vaisbort (Co-Founder, second-time defense founder, previously founded Haylon Technologies) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Defense and Space Manufacturing — specifically autonomous underwater vehicles (UUVs) / drone submarines - **Target customers**: B2G — U.S. Navy, Special Operations Forces, intelligence community, allied foreign militaries; also open to commercial entities with undersea needs - **Mission**: Build the next generation of unmanned underwater vehicles to prevent maritime invasions and provide asymmetric undersea dominance at scale ## Products & Services - **Ghostfin (Expeditionary Drone Submarine)**: A 6-foot autonomous underwater vehicle designed for mass production and long-range deployment. Specs: 102 in base length, 12.75 in outer diameter, 425 lbs dry weight, 200 lbs max payload, 1,000 nautical mile range (10x greater than comparable vehicles), 30-day endurance. It is scalable (built from commercial off-the-shelf components), modular (configurable mission modules for survey, logistics, and strike), persistent (longer transit/loiter via novel energy storage and propulsion), and autonomous (embedded analytics and navigational software). Capable of rapidly launching from boats, piers, or beaches; supports persistent undersea sensing, observation, and communication, and can deliver kinetic strike effects across ocean distances. Also supports swarm deployment and high-bandwidth data relay to support vessels. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company) - **Key Metric**: Total Funding — $6.6M ($6,625,000) across 2 seed rounds - **Funding History**: - Seed Round (June 2025): $125,000, 1 investor - Seed Round (September 2025): $6.5M, 15 investors - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator (led), Outlander VC (led) - **Growth Signals**: - Headcount: 25 employees, with +3.6% monthly growth - Team talent sources include Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Boston Consulting Group, and the University of Pennsylvania - Founding team has led >$9B in unmanned systems manufacturing/procurement efforts (Huddleston) and >$10M in DoD contract efforts (Vaisbort) - Actively hiring for Mechanical, Software, and Electrical Engineering roles ## Competitive Advantages - **10x range advantage**: Ghostfin offers 1,000 nautical miles of transit distance versus other vehicles of comparable size - **Mass-producibility**: Designed from widely available commercial off-the-shelf components requiring minimal specialized machinery — a key cost and scale advantage - **Modular architecture**: Configurable mission modules enable rapid maintenance, upgrade pathways, and mission-specific payloads (survey, logistics, strike) - **Experienced team**: Engineering heritage includes Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, and Johnson & Johnson; combined 20+ years in space flight technology, autonomous vehicle AI, medical robotics, and robo-submarine competitions - **Founder track record**: Repeat defense founder with existing DoD relationships and active company (Haylon Technologies) in the autonomous power space ## Strategic Focus - **Go-to-market**: Deliver solutions to the Navy, Special Operations Forces, intelligence community, and allied foreign militaries; also exploring commercial applications - **Product priorities**: Continued development of Ghostfin's energy storage and propulsion technology to maintain the endurance/range edge; expanding modular payload capabilities for strike, logistics, and survey missions - **At-scale deployment**: Emphasizing swarm operations, rapid launch from minimal infrastructure, and ocean-wide autonomous precision effects - **Manufacturing**: Building out supply chain and production capabilities for true mass production of undersea systems ## Why Work Here - **High-impact defense mission**: Directly contribute to national security and maritime defense with a young, mission-driven team - **Early-stage ownership**: Join post-seed, pre-scale startup (25 employees) where engineers have outsized influence on product and architecture - **Location**: Based in Philadelphia, PA - **Open roles**: Mechanical Engineer, Software Engineer, Electrical Engineer (plus past openings for Powertrain Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Head of Supply Chain, and internships) - **Technical culture**: Hands-on work spanning robotics, AI, propulsion, battery systems, manufacturing, and defense contracting — a broad, fast-paced engineering environment - **Backing**: Y Combinator-backed with meaningful seed funding to support growth ## Sources 1. [albacore.inc](https://www.albacore.inc/) 2. [albacore.inc/careers](https://www.albacore.inc/careers) 3. [jobs.gem.com](https://jobs.gem.com/albacore) 4. [linkedin.com/company/albacore-inc](https://www.linkedin.com/company/albacore-inc) 5. [ycombinator.com/companies/albacore-inc](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/albacore-inc) ## Other roles at Albacore - [Senior Electrical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-electrical-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-vy3f9zsb0rz9) — Philadelphia, PA - [Field Test Engineer (Copy)](https://feeny.ai/job/field-test-engineer-copy-albacore-philadelphia-v5cz8kay9qm7) — Philadelphia, PA - [Field Test Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/field-test-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-wqvsm8xnkkyg) — Philadelphia, PA - [IT Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/it-lead-albacore-philadelphia-93cdp2m8db7c) — Philadelphia, PA - [Powertrain Engineer, Internal Combustion Engines](https://feeny.ai/job/powertrain-engineer-internal-combustion-engines-albacore-philadelphia-8cz2apq6ry3g) — Philadelphia, PA - [Supply Chain Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-chain-manager-albacore-philadelphia-x25q8k1skrqh) — Philadelphia, PA - [Software Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineering-intern-albacore-philadelphia-r9qnyvtza79f) — Philadelphia, PA - [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-ynn2pfwcerfj) — Philadelphia, PA - [Mechanical Engineering Intern](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineering-intern-albacore-philadelphia-b5q800psm3pw) — Philadelphia, PA - [Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mechanical-engineer-albacore-philadelphia-s272xzw90st7) — Philadelphia, PA