Principal, Customer Success; R5246 Security Clearance

Position: Principal, Customer Success (R5246) with Security Clearance
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI's technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below). . Follow Shield AI on Linked In , X , Instagram , and You Tube .

Job Description:

Shield AI is seeking a Principal, Customer Success to establish and lead the Aircraft Division Customer Success function and own the Critical Accounts Program for V-BAT and X-BAT customers. This leader will ensure customers achieve mission value, operational readiness, adoption, and long-term success across the full customer lifecycle. This role combines team leadership, customer success execution, executive account governance, operational awareness, and critical-account recovery.

The ideal candidate has led customer-facing teams in aerospace, defense, aviation, complex enterprise, or mission-critical technology environments and can create repeatable customer operating rhythms while responding decisively to escalated, at-risk, or strategically sensitive accounts. As the owner of the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program, this leader will establish clear account health criteria, executive visibility, cross-functional recovery plans, risk burn-down discipline, decision cadence, and accountable closure.

This person will serve as a senior customer advocate and cross-functional leader, ensuring customer risks are surfaced early, resolved with urgency, and converted into lasting improvements across product, operations, training, sustainment, and support. What you'll do:
* Establish and lead the Aircraft Division Customer Success function supporting V-BAT and X-BAT customers across U.S. government, allied, defense, and strategic commercial accounts.
* Lead, coach, and develop a team of Customer Success Managers responsible for customer adoption, readiness, mission value, and long-term account success.
* Build and operate the Customer Success operating model, including account segmentation, customer health scoring, success plans, engagement cadence, executive business reviews, and lifecycle governance.
* Ensure priority customers have documented success plans tied to mission outcomes, readiness objectives, adoption milestones, sustainment needs, and executive stakeholder alignment.
* Establish clear ownership and operating rhythms across Customer Success, Deployment Operations, Flight Operations, Training, Sustainment, Program Management, Sales, Product, Engineering, Quality, and Mission Operations.
* Lead the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program for escalated, at-risk, high-priority, or strategically sensitive customers.
* Define and manage CAP entry criteria, severity levels, account health triggers, escalation paths, exit criteria, and executive reporting standards.
* Lead cross-functional critical account reviews with clear owners, decision logs, recovery plans, customer communications, root-cause analysis, and measurable closure criteria.
* Provide senior leadership with concise, action-oriented visibility into account risk, customer sentiment, mission impact, commercial exposure, and recovery status.
* Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Training, Sustainment, and Business Development to drive permanent corrective actions and prevent recurring customer issues.
* Serve as a senior customer advocate for V-BAT and X-BAT customers, ensuring Shield AI understands customer mission needs, operating constraints, adoption barriers, readiness expectations, and growth opportunities.
* Translate customer feedback into clear product, support, training, documentation, sustainment, and operational requirements.
* Build scalable processes for onboarding, adoption, training coordination, operational readiness, sustainment handoffs, and recurring mission value reviews.
* Support strategic customer engagements, demonstrations, exercises, operational deployments, and…