Founders and careers

We are looking for people to build these companies.

Ensis Studio does not build companies and then look for someone to run them. The founder is the company. What the studio provides is everything around that person which would otherwise take two years and a great deal of money to assemble.

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What you get

A company, not an idea: An incorporated Canadian entity with its own board, its own cap table and meaningful founder ownership.
Initial capital: Funding to reach a working prototype, released against a plan you help build.
A validated requirement: A documented customer case, tested against real defence demand before you are asked to commit to it.
Institutional access: Procurement literacy, defence relationships and the ability to get a hearing — the part that is genuinely hard to acquire from outside.
Funding strategy: A sequenced plan across innovation programmes, research contracts and tax incentives, run by people who have done it before.
Security framework: Organisation-level screening and compliance infrastructure you inherit rather than build.
Shared services: Finance, legal, contracting and administration handled at the platform level so you are not building a back office.

Who we are looking for

Deep technical credibility in a field relevant to one of our domains — engineering, autonomy, software, AI, sensing, cryptography, manufacturing or systems integration.
Evidence of having built something before. A company, a product, a programme or a capability that went from nothing to working.
Comfort with a customer who is deliberate, risk-averse and slow by commercial standards, and who has excellent reasons to be all three.
Willingness to be the accountable person. Not an advisor, not a technical lead — the founder.

Prior defence experience is welcome and is not required. Several of the capability classes we work in have their strongest talent outside the defence sector entirely, and part of the studio’s job is to make that crossing survivable.

Security screening

Most defence work in Canada requires personnel security screening at the Secret level or above. Screening is sponsored by the organisation that employs you, so what matters at this stage is eligibility rather than a clearance in hand: Canadian citizenship or an eligible residency status, and a background that will withstand the process. An existing clearance shortens a long timeline. Not having one is not a barrier.

What this is not

Not a grant: We take equity and take a seat at the table. This is company formation, not a funding programme.
Not an accelerator: There is no cohort, no demo day and no fixed programme length.
Not consulting: We are not advising your existing business on defence entry. We are forming a new company with you.
Not a job at the studio: You would be the founder of an independent company, not an employee of Ensis Studio.

Beyond founders

The studio and its companies will also need technical leaders, engineers, programme managers, contracting and security specialists, and people who understand defence procurement from the inside. If you are interested in the work but not in founding a company, tell us what you do and we will keep you in view as roles open.