Two decades after starting his career in national security, Joey Lauffer is leading a new kind of mission — one powered by generative AI. As chief growth officer at BTI360, he’s helping transform how government and industry solve complex problems while keeping people, purpose and innovation at the center.
In this Q&A, Lauffer discusses BTI360’s vision for mission-focused AI, the launch of BTI360 Labs and how the company’s culture fuels its next chapter of growth.
Can you provide a brief overview of your professional background and career progression? Please include what ultimately landed you in your current role.
20 years ago I entered the National Security industry as a Program Manager. There was so much I didn’t know as a recent college grad but I quickly gravitated towards the kind of work I loved—solving problems. The more complex and impactful the problem, the more I was energized by it. This passion led me to roles at GDIT and Google, where I worked with large teams on some of the most challenging problems in our industry.
In 2023, I was introduced to BTI360 and was intrigued by what I saw—a mid-sized software company with a strong culture, a reputation for technical innovation, and a compelling confidence in their ability to solve problems. They didn’t shy away from challenging, sensitive work, and they often worked on firm-fixed-price contracts, gladly accepting the additional risk that comes with it.
I saw an opportunity to increase my impact, working with an agile team that was well-positioned to tackle some of the toughest problems in the national security space. Today, we are helping lead the charge to bring mission-critical AI to the forefront, and I am in a position to make a broad and meaningful impact, both for our customers and for the community we serve.
What are your current top priorities and responsibilities? How do these relate to your company’s overall mission/growth strategy?
BTI360’s purpose is to Unlock the Potential of Others, therefore my top priority as CGO is to find opportunities where our team is uniquely qualified to make an exponential impact for the operator using our software. As an organization, we are laser-focused on delivering AI solutions to national security challenges, even if that means saying no to other work, as painful as that can be. As we look to scale and expand into new markets, our focus will remain unwavering: putting our teams and our customers at the center of everything we do. That vision has defined BTI360’s success, and it will continue to guide us through every step in our growth journey.
Where do you and your team see growth opportunities in your current field or portfolio you support, or what do you anticipate to be your customers’ top pain points?
We see huge opportunities to automate business functions using Generative AI. Our human-machine teaming software capabilities automate implicit business rules and create user interfaces that enable operators to provide higher-value insights. These tools are designed to save our customers substantial time by automating tasks previously considered near impossible. We are excited to leverage proprietary data and institutional expertise to generate high-value data products in new domains.
As we develop new automation workflows, we believe it is equally important to provide the ability to measure and evaluate the quality of the resulting products over time. Having a transparent workflow that can demonstrate the reasoning behind a product will be vital to building end-user trust and driving adoption.
Finally, organizations must balance innovation with cost discipline, ensuring that automation approaches remain effective and sustainable at scale without becoming cost-prohibitive. LLMs are not the answer to every problem. Some problems can be solved just as well with more affordable workflows. Even within RAG implementations, there are strategies that can drastically reduce the cost.
How are you and your team planning to address/prepare for these opportunities?
To prepare for anticipated challenges, BTI360 has established BTI360 Labs, a dedicated innovation hub focused on solving our customers’ most pressing challenges. Through this strategic investment, we are conducting applied research in three critical areas:
- Corporate Knowledge Automation: Streamlining business functions through advanced automation techniques.
- GenAI Capability Assessment: Developing rigorous and transparent evaluation and testing frameworks to ensure trust and facilitate the adoption of Generative AI.
- Custom Model Development: Crafting bespoke models tailored to proprietary customer data, empowering mission partners with unique insights and a distinct competitive advantage.
This forward-leaning approach positions BTI360 to guide customers through the complexities of automation, instill confidence in emerging technologies, and deliver meaningful, cost-effective results at scale.