---
title: 'Founding Go-to-Market Lead at Navi AI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/founding-go-to-market-lead-navi-ai-san-francisco-dfrx47rngsm4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Founding Go-to-Market Lead at Navi AI

- **Company:** Navi AI
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-06-23
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/navi/8a66fff6-5ca4-4c58-951e-9555534f66eb

## Job description

Navi captures everything a pilot sees and hears and turns it into automated debrief intelligence. The platform is live at flight schools, business jet operators, and the U.S. Air Force — and demand is accelerating. You're the person who owns the full revenue motion from outbound to retention.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

Navi turns everything a pilot sees and hears into automated debrief intelligence — and it's already trusted by the top names in flight training and the U.S. Air Force. The product works. What doesn't exist yet is the machine that makes every operator in aviation know Navi before anyone ever picks up the phone. That's what you'll build.

This is a founding GTM role focused on the growth engine — the demand, distribution, and systems that manufacture pipeline and credibility at scale. You're the operator who builds the engine that fills their pipeline and makes Navi impossible to ignore. We don't want someone to run a motion that already exists. We want the person who designs it from ground up.

This is a founding-level ownership role, not a narrow function.

## WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Architect multi-channel outbound — email, LinkedIn, lifecycle, enterprise segmentation — as a repeatable system, not one-off sends
- Own discoverability — SEO, GEO, AI-native distribution — and convert product milestones into reach
- Stand up the GTM tooling stack — CRM hygiene, attribution, and semi-automated workflows that lift pipeline velocity
- Take over the inbound and social channels the CEO runs today and turn them into a consistent content engine across written, social, and aviation-ecosystem platforms
- Build co-marketing and partner motions across the aviation and defense ecosystem
- Obsess over signal — what's driving pipeline, what's stalling, and why

## ABOUT YOU

- Have built go-to-market machinery from zero (outbound engines, demand-gen programs, growth tooling)
- Able to think in tests, not opinions; you instrument everything, read the funnel math (conversion, velocity, CAC), and are comfortable working at high-velocity
- Can work AI-first and can wire up automations, enrichment, and a little code yourself, without waiting on engineering
- Spent time in a growth, GTM-engineering, or founding role at an early-stage startup, ideally building and scaling outbound or demand gen for a technical or AI product
- Have performed aviation sales, and have built a network across the industry, from airlines to flight schools and charters

## NICE TO HAVE

- You've built a content or organic-growth engine that turned into real pipeline
- Hands-on with the modern GTM stack — Clay, Apollo, HubSpot or Salesforce, Zapier/n8n, and the like
- You've shipped your own scrappy tools, scrapers, or automations — a little code or a few AI agents doesn't scare you
- A real point of view on how AI is reshaping outbound and distribution

## WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS

The engine you build turns a proven product into compounding, predictable growth: demand that shows up on its own, content that works while you sleep, and systems that get sharper every week. It outlasts any single campaign, and it sets the pace for everything the company does next.

## WHAT YOU'LL GET

- Early-stage equity — real ownership in a category-defining company
- Flight training — earn your pilot's license and sell with true domain expertise
- Impact you can see — the deals you close put Navi in cockpits at airlines, flight schools, and the U.S. Air Force
- A role that scales into commercial leadership as we grow

## HOW WE WORK

- Find a way. We don't wait for permission or perfect information. Ideas come from anywhere regardless of title. Figure it out, ship it, iterate.
- Creativity over control. First principles over process. We'd rather have a creative solution that's 80% right today than a perfect one next quarter.
- Update fast. Come in with a hypothesis, throw it away when the data says otherwise. Ego has no place here.
- Intensity with focus. We work hard because the mission demands it. Clarity on what matters is how we make that sustainable.

## About Navi AI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Navi AI builds the first purpose-built generative AI platform for aviation, providing an AI co-pilot for pilot training that turns every aircraft into a data source to deliver automated, data-driven flight debriefs and safety intelligence.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA (also has an office in Bengaluru, India)
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Nikola Kostic (CEO) and Vivek Velivela (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Aviation Technology / Aerospace / Defense / Artificial Intelligence
- **Target Customers**: B2B — flight schools (Part 141), universities (aerospace programs), and military/defense organizations (U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School).
- **Mission/Purpose Statement**: To make aviation safety proactive — starting in training. Navi gives every pilot and squadron the intelligence edge they deserve.

## Products & Services
- **Navi AI Platform**: An AI-driven platform that ingests cockpit audio, aircraft telemetry, and environmental data (weather, traffic, aircraft history) to generate moment-by-moment, automated flight debriefs. It provides 40–50 key insights per flight through text, visuals, and animations. The platform is grounded in the flight school’s syllabus, POH, PHAK, and FAA regulations.
- **AI Debrief Assistant**: A context-aware conversational AI that trainee pilots can query about their performance, referencing their own flight data, standard operating procedures, and FAA regulations.
- **Automated Maneuver Analysis**: Analyzes intent, behavior, and performance for every maneuver during a flight, aligning outputs to the specific lesson or maneuver being taught.
- **Full Sortie Replay**: Provides a phase-by-phase breakdown of every training flight from engine start to shutdown.
- **Institutional Analytics (FOQA+)**: Goes beyond traditional FOQA by combining flight data with instructor interactions, environmental data, and procedural context, giving flight academies real-time visibility into trainee progression, trend analysis, and early safety pattern detection.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly available (seed-stage company).
- **Key Metric – Total Funding**: $6.7 million raised to date.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**:
    - **United Airlines Ventures** (strategic investor)
    - **BVVC** (lead investor)
    - **New Vista Capital**
    - **Raptor Group**
    - **I2BF**
    - **U.S. Department of War** ($1.27M SBIR Phase II grant)
    - **Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University** (strategic partner and equity stakeholder)
    - **Garmin** (technology partnership, integrated with their avionics ecosystem)
- **Growth Signals**:
    - Launched from stealth in March 2026 with $6.7M in funding.
    - First commercial deployment in September 2024 with Sling Pilot Academy; now logging 55,000+ flight hours annually at Sling.
    - Platform deployed or under evaluation at leading flight schools: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, University of North Dakota, Purdue University, Utah State University, Delta State University, and the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School.
    - Plans to hire 15 additional employees in 2026 (currently 7 employees), aggressively scaling the team.
    - Has a $1.27M SBIR Phase II contract from the U.S. Department of War to adapt its platform for the T-38 fleet at Edwards AFB.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-Mover in AI-Powered Debriefing**: No other company offers a purpose-built, commercially operational generative AI platform specifically for pilot training that automates post-flight analysis.
- **Domain-Specific LLM**: Trained on 100,000+ real flight hours, analyzing intent, behavior, and performance — not just generic AI.
- **Deep Institutional Partnerships**: Already embedded in the world's largest aerospace university (Embry-Riddle) and working with the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, providing credibility and a strong go-to-market signal.
- **Strategic Backing**: Backed by United Airlines Ventures (a direct channel to commercial aviation) and the U.S. Department of War, giving it a dual commercial and defense pathway.
- **Real-World Traction**: 55,000+ flight hours annually processed at Sling Pilot Academy, proving the product works at scale in a live training environment.

## Strategic Focus
- **Near-term**: Dominate the U.S. pilot training market by equipping every training aircraft with the Navi platform.
- **Medium-term**: Expand into commercial aviation, applying the same real-time analysis and performance intelligence to airline operations.
- **Defense**: Adapt and scale the platform for military use (U.S. Air Force), starting with the Test Pilot School and the T-38 fleet.
- **Product**: Continue to deepen the integration with Garmin avionics and expand the platform's ability to ingest more data sources.

## Why Work Here
- **High-Impact Mission**: Work directly on making aviation safer, with a tangible product already in use by pilots and the military. The company culture emphasizes building for a critical national need ("Your country needs you").
- **Early-Stage, High-Growth**: With only 7 employees and a plan to hire 15 more, this is a true seed-stage startup where new hires will define the product, culture, and engineering practices from the ground up.
- **Engineering-Centric**: The open roles (Founding Software Engineer, ML/AI Founding Engineer, Founding Hardware Engineer, Deployment Engineer) indicate a deep focus on core product engineering and infrastructure.
- **On-Site / Hybrid**: San Francisco headquarters is primarily in-office; Bengaluru office also exists. The company favors on-site work for its core team.
- **Fast-Paced Culture**: The careers page signals an expectation of high agency: "if ten things a day sounds like a slow Tuesday - we need you."
- **Interesting Tech Stack**: Working with cockpit telemetry, audio, domain-specific LLMs, avionics integration (Garmin), and real-time data pipelines — a mix of hardware, software, and AI.
- **Founding Team Access**: Opportunity to work directly with the co-founders (Nikola Kostic, CEO; Vivek Velivela, CTO) and shape the company's technical direction.

## Sources
1. [flynavi.com](https://www.flynavi.com/)
2. [flynavi.com/careers](https://www.flynavi.com/careers)
3. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/navi-ai)
4. [flynavi.com/newsroom](https://www.flynavi.com/newsroom)
5. [prnewswire.com](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/navi-ai-emerges-from-stealth-to-accelerate-pilot-training-with-ai-302724509.html)
6. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/navi](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/navi)

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- [Part-time CFI](https://feeny.ai/job/part-time-cfi-navi-ai-san-francisco-rg9jj8vsp9qs) — San Francisco, CA
- [Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-engineer-navi-ai-san-francisco-jc3wsjez8qm6) — San Francisco, CA
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