Mission Director
Owns strategy, architecture governance, priorities, resources, institutional relationships, risk acceptance, and continuity. Associate Mission Directors may hold standing domain responsibility.
See governance responsibility →Organization
Mission Command directs. SOTE Operations operates. SOTE Missions execute bounded authentic work.
SOTE separates governance, persistent operations, and bounded student mission work so the organization can survive personnel turnover and keep authority explicit.
SOTE Operators
Student workers who run day-to-day operations, implement approved infrastructure, maintain systems, document changes, validate work, and guide missions.
See operational responsibility →Mission Technicians
Students assigned to bounded authentic work. Course enrollment alone does not create SOTE status, employment, or infrastructure authority.
See mission authority model →Trust Architecture
The physical architecture teaches the governance model.
Authority becomes more restricted as work moves from classroom endpoints toward production and cyber-range infrastructure.
Classroom / endpoints
Students and Mission Technicians work at assigned endpoints and approved instructional resources. No implied infrastructure authority.
Rack 1 instructional equipment
Authorized Mission Technicians may configure designated routers and switches within explicit mission scope.
Rack 1 core / aggregation
SOTE Operations and Mission Command maintain the backbone. Mission Technicians may use the pathway without administering it.
Rack 2 production SOTE
Standing infrastructure authority belongs to SOTE Operations and Mission Command. Mission Technicians may consume approved services without administering the production layer.
Rack 3 restricted cyber range
Standing infrastructure authority belongs to Mission Command. Operators require specific authorization; cyber missions may grant bounded target access without control of the hosting infrastructure.
Authority
Titles do not grant unlimited access.
Physical scope
What equipment or spaces may be physically touched or modified?
Infrastructure scope
What infrastructure may be configured or administered?
Service scope
What applications, services, accounts, or targets may be used or administered?
Mission scope
What temporary additional authority exists for this approved mission?
SOTE must outlast its builders.
A SOTE system is not complete when it works. It is complete when another Operator can understand, operate, recover, and eventually rebuild it without depending on the original builder.