Yesterday at the Tectonic European Defense Summit in Paris, Kraken Technology Group announced that Erica Dill-Russell is joining as its Chief Commercial Officer.
Founded by CEO Mal Crease — who had previously founded and led businesses in the area of speed racing (both on land and sea) — Kraken Technology Group is a maritime startup whose flagship products are uncrewed and autonomous high-performance nautical vessels. It sells its tech directly to defence and commercial customers, as well as in partnership with primes like NVL.
Launched in London in 2021, Kraken is backed by NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), the UK’s NSSIF, and Superangel. It last announced funding in June 2025 but it has never disclosed how much it has raised.
Dill-Russell is coming to Kraken with years of experience in defence across both governmental and private roles.
She served in the New Zealand Defence Forces before moving into positions supporting science and technology initiatives and technical exercises across the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. In her past roles, she spent years observing Kraken from technical experimentation phase to working alongside it in partnership with different organisations.
As CCO, New Zealand-born, Florida-based Dill-Russell will over oversee what the company describes as “global” growth. That is a key word here, since Kraken to date has focused much of its attention and business on the UK and Europe, but it clearly has wider ambitions.
“I will be based in the States and also in Europe for a lot of my time, not to mention our growing interest in the IndoPac Region,” Dill-Russell told Resilience Media in an interview.
How does being a Kiwi affect Dill-Russell’s outlook on defence and national security? “Fundamentally, it’s a result of both my geolocation as I was growing up, but also my previous service in the military,” she told us.
“It’s no secret that Taiwan is receiving a lot of focus right now and we have to understand how we operate in that area,” she continued. “I come critically equipped and critically considered for that which is really important as we consider how we operation in IndoPac, what the problems might be, and what the challenges are of operating there.” (Read more on Taiwan and its maritime security challenges here.)
Dill-Russell’s superpower is navigating the murky world of international procurement and international interoperable deployment of novel technologies, a skill she honed during her time at US Special Operations Command and Liberty Alliance. In the last year, Kraken has announced partnership with NVL.
“We are delighted to welcome Erica to the team as Chief Commercial Officer,” Crease told Resilience Media. “She brings a wealth of experience to the team and we know she will be a fantastic asset as Kraken continues to grow both in the UK and internationally.”
At Kraken, Dill-Russell will be reviewing partnerships as well as “acquisition at scale of Kraken platforms, and the equipping of operators at scale with low-cost systems that they can deploy in multiple operational areas,” she told us.
It cannot be understated how few women occupy C-level positions within the startup defence tech landscape, so it would be remiss not to acknowledge Dill-Russell as a trailblazer.
However, she sidestepped a direct response when we asked how and if she or other women in the industry have been impacted by rhetoric from the top of the Pentagon regarding diversity — where US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said women who cannot pass rigorous physical tests should not be considered for combat roles and described the phrase “our diversity is our strength” as an “insane fallacy.”
“For me, everyone has lived experience, everyone has diversity and so I don’t consider myself the addition of diversity at Kraken,” she said. “But I think it is also really important that I am unique and I get to do some really incredible things where I might not look the same as other people in this industry.”
This piece was edited, as Erica Dill-Russell is not Kraken’s first CCO. Ed Tilson previously served in that role. It also removed a reference to partnership with Anduril.
