Head of Product Design; R5776

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, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. 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 www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on Linked In, X, Instagram, and You Tube.

A major focus of this role will be shaping the next generation of AI-native and agent-driven workflows across the autonomy lifecycle. As Hivemind evolves from traditional software tooling toward AI-assisted autonomy development, simulation, evaluation, deployment, and operations, this leader will help invent entirely new ways for users to collaborate with AI systems, agents, and foundation-model-powered tools. The ideal candidate has deep experience designing AI products, developer platforms, or complex technical systems and can translate emerging AI capabilities into workflows that dramatically improve user productivity and outcomes.

This is a highly hands-on role as this leader will manage a team of elite designers. During the first 6-12 months, most of the time will be spent conducting user research, designing experiences, prototyping concepts, facilitating product discovery, and partnering directly with Product and Engineering teams to define the future of autonomy development.

• Lead customer research efforts across product development, customer engagement, and solutions teams to identify pain points, workflows, unmet needs, and product opportunities.
• Establish scalable mechanisms for gathering, synthesizing, and communicating user insights throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Translate customer and operational feedback into actionable product recommendations, requirements, and design initiatives.

• Design end-to-end workflows across autonomy development, simulation, testing, analysis, deployment, and operations.
• Create intuitive experiences for highly technical users including autonomy engineers, software developers, operators, and mission planners.
• Simplify complex system architectures, data flows, infrastructure tooling, and AI workflows into understandable user experiences.
• Own the end-to-end experience of the product including training, documentation, tutorials, and overall workflows – help our users get the most of the product.

• Partner closely with Product Managers to shape product vision, roadmap priorities, and go-to-market strategies.
• Drive alignment across Product, Engineering, Design, and Executive Leadership through compelling narratives, prototypes, and visual storytelling.
• Advocate for user-centered decision making in a highly technical and engineering-driven environment.

• Establish and evolve design standards, design systems, UX principles, and product design best practices across Shield AI.
• Raise the quality bar for product design, usability, consistency, and customer experience.
• Grow the product design function by mentoring a small team of designers, shaping design culture, and staying actively involved in critical design work.
• Champion…