Product Manager, Hivemind Forge (R2913)

Introduction to Shield AIFounded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company whose mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. In pursuit of this mission, Shield AI is building the world’s best AI pilot. Its AI pilot, Hivemind, has flown a fighter jet (F-16), a vertical takeoff and landing drone (V-BAT), and a quadcopter (Nova). The company has offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington DC and abroad. Shield AI’s products and people are currently in the field actively supporting operations with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. allies.

Hivemind Forge is Shield AI’s productized platform for autonomy development and testing that provides capabilities for scenario design, simulation, test orchestration, data management, data analysis and visualization, configuration management, machine learning, reinforcement learning, and much more. As Forge Product Manager, you will guide the product’s development and roadmap and set priorities for software releases based on a deep understanding of both internal user and external customer needs. These will be driven by direct interaction with autonomy engineers and test engineers, as well as a deep understanding of the technical landscape and both government and commercial customers. You will be the owner and primary driver of Shield AI’s autonomy development and testing platform.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

• Develop and maintain a roadmap for Hivemind Forge that provides cutting edge applications, services, and tools to accelerate and simplify develop-test workflows for complex autonomy.
• Design and oversee delivery of highly scalable software that solves some of the most challenging problems in autonomy development, including high-fidelity physics-based simulation, orchestrating distributed tests on heterogeneous compute resources, analyzing and visualizing autonomy data from real-world flights, fine-tuning state estimation algorithms, training autonomous behavior policies using reinforcement learning, applying generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to autonomy development, and much more.
• Interface directly with customers and users to understand their goals, needs, and priorities with respect to their development and testing workflows.
• Develop product requirements based on deep understanding of customer needs.
• Be an expert user of and evangelist for Hivemind Forge.
• Ensure the Hivemind Forge product has industry leading capabilities, quality, extensibility, and documentation.
• Understand the business and technical landscape that affects your product.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Typically requires a minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 9 years and a Master’s degree; or 7 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
• B.S. in Computer Science or a similar technical degree.
• 8+ years of relevant work experience and 3+ years of software engineering experience.
• You have both breadth and depth of experience developing developer-oriented software products.
• You are comfortable working in a UNIX terminal and using Git, a common build tool such as CMake, and basic development tools such as Docker.
• You are an expert communicator and collaborator with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• You are an expert at balancing technical vs business risks and turning engineering output into business outcomes.
• You are a relentless learner who can comfortably develop the specialized knowledge necessary to drive the roadmap of a highly technical product.
• You have deep customer empathy and are highly creative at crafting technical solutions to solve customer problems.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Advanced degree in Computer Science or MBA
• Experience developing and shipping software for autonomous robots or autonomy software developers and testers
• Experience in highly technical customer facing roles
• Expertise with modern scalable software technologies and frameworks such as Docker, Kubernetes, microservice architectures, distributed systems, or cloud-based deployment.
• Experience with defense focused simulators such as NGTS, AFSIM, etc.
• Experience with unmanned air or maritime systems
• Experience in cybersecurity, especially for US defense or government customers