Head of Product Design
Shield AI is a U.S. defense-technology company developing mission-autonomy software and autonomous aircraft for military and allied operations.
Funding history
Investors
About Shield AI
Founded in 2015, Shield AI builds Hivemind autonomy software and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft for operations in contested, GPS- and communications-denied environments. Its current site also presents Aechelon synthetic-reality simulation and Vision Systems detection and tracking products.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead customer research and turn insights into product strategy and design solutions. You will design end-to-end technical workflows, establish design standards and systems, mentor designers, shape product direction, and create human-AI collaboration experiences.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in product design, UX design, human factors, or related fields
- Experience designing and shipping complex technical products, developer tools, platforms, infrastructure software, data-dense applications, or enterprise systems
- Technical fluency for collaborating on architecture, technical constraints, and software development workflows
- Experience conducting user research and translating insights into product strategy and design solutions
- Ability to influence product direction and organizational decisions without direct authority
- Understanding of AI-powered product experiences, conversational interfaces, human-in-the-loop workflows, AI-assisted decision making, and agent-based systems
- Experience defining user experiences in ambiguous technology spaces
- Experience building and retaining high-performing design teams
- Portfolio demonstrating strategic thinking and hands-on design execution
Responsibilities
- Lead customer research across product development and customer engagement
- Establish mechanisms for gathering, synthesizing, and communicating user insights
- Translate customer feedback into product recommendations, requirements, and design initiatives
- Design end-to-end workflows for autonomy development, simulation, testing, analysis, deployment, and operations
- Create technical user experiences for engineers, developers, operators, and mission planners
- Simplify complex architectures, data flows, infrastructure tooling, and AI workflows
- Own product experience including training, documentation, tutorials, and workflows
- Shape product vision, roadmap priorities, and go-to-market strategies
- Drive alignment through narratives, prototypes, and visual storytelling
- Establish design standards, design systems, UX principles, and product design practices
- Mentor designers and remain involved in critical design work
- Design human-AI collaboration models and AI-assisted workflows
- Develop frameworks for trust, transparency, explainability, and human oversight
Benefits
- Bonus
- Benefits
- Equity