Product Manager - Autonomy

Overview

Hermeus is a high-speed aircraft manufacturer focused on the rapid design, build, and test of high-Mach and hypersonic aircraft for the national interest. Working directly with the Department of Defense, Hermeus delivers capabilities that will ensure that our nation, and our allies, maintain an asymmetric advantage over any and all potential adversaries.

The Product Manager - Autonomy is responsible for defining, prioritizing, and shaping autonomy capabilities across aircraft, mission systems, ground control, and simulation environments. This role sits at the intersection of operational needs, program objectives, and system integration, translating mission intent into clear autonomy product capabilities that can be developed, tested, demonstrated, and evolved across programs and increments.

This position owns the autonomy product from a capability and outcome perspective, including capability decomposition, interface expectations, autonomy/VMS interaction intent, OMS/UCI alignment priorities, integration sequencing, and roadmap evolution. The role ensures autonomy development remains focused on delivering operational value and mission-relevant behavior across simulation, test, and flight.

The role partners closely with Product, Advanced Development, Autonomy Engineering, VMS, Flight Test, and external partners to ensure autonomy capabilities are coherent, demonstrable, and aligned with customer and program expectations.

• Autonomy product definition and strategy: Define autonomy product capabilities spanning mission planning, execution, contingency management, operator interaction, vehicle coordination, and post-mission debrief; translate operational needs, CONOPs, and program objectives into prioritized autonomy capability increments with clear acceptance criteria; and maintain the autonomy roadmap balancing near-term demonstration needs with long-term scalability and reuse.
• Capability decomposition and integration intent: Define autonomy capability boundaries, dependencies, and integration intent across aircraft systems, mission systems, ground control, and simulation environments; frame integration expectations aligned to program milestones and flight-test objectives; and identify capability gaps, overlaps, and dependencies while driving cross-team alignment.
• Interfaces, standards, and alignment: Define autonomy-related interface expectations and data-flow requirements aligned with OMS, UCI, ICDs, and API-based integration patterns, ensuring capability definitions account for interface versioning, compatibility, configuration dependencies, and consistency across simulation, HITL, and flight environments.
• Translation of operational needs into product requirements: Convert operational concepts, autonomy behaviors, and mission workflows into clear, observable, and testable product requirements and acceptance criteria while surfacing integration risks and constraint impacts early and driving resolution with stakeholders.
• Simulation, test, and flight enablement: Define how autonomy capabilities are exercised across SITL, HITL, large-scale simulation, and flight test; ensure product requirements support deterministic testing, safety assessment, and post-flight analysis; and partner with test and flight teams to evaluate capabilities against defined success criteria.
• Autonomy–vehicle interaction alignment: Define product expectations for how autonomy interacts with vehicle management functions—including modes, transitions, constraints, and degraded operations—ensuring capability definitions respect vehicle safety, performance, and operational envelopes across mission phases.
• Verification, validation, and readiness support: Define autonomy-related acceptance criteria and evidence expectations for capability readiness, ensure traceability from requirements through verification evidence and flight results, and support readiness discussions for autonomy integration into flight events and demonstrations.
• Cross-team product leadership: Provide product leadership across autonomy developers, mission system teams, simulation teams, and external partners, clearly communicating autonomy…