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Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company developing intelligent autonomous systems, including Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation technologies. The company operates globally with offices across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
As Staff Technical Program Manager, you will lead end-to-end execution of complex unmanned aerial systems (UAS), autonomy, mission-system, or customer-delivery programs. You will own integrated program plans encompassing scope, milestones, schedules, critical path, resource allocation, dependencies, risks, issues, decisions, and change control. Working closely with technical leads, you will ensure requirements, interfaces, verification plans, test readiness, technical baselines, and customer acceptance criteria are clear, measurable, and traceable.
You will lead cross-functional system integration and test execution across hardware, software, autonomy, systems engineering, test, manufacturing, flight operations, cybersecurity, and field/customer teams. You will drive timely resolution of technical and programmatic issues, facilitate trade studies and risk mitigations, and escalate decisions to leadership when needed. You will establish and lead multi-team delivery cadences, including integrated planning, dependency reviews, program execution reviews, system demonstrations, release-readiness reviews, and continuous-improvement activities.
Key responsibilities include coordinating delivery across multiple engineering teams and customer commitments, identifying and removing systemic blockers, and communicating technical status, risks, tradeoffs, and delivery outlook to engineering leadership, executives, customers, and external stakeholders. You will develop program metrics and dashboards to improve execution predictability, integration readiness, requirements-verification status, risk posture, and release performance. You will also mentor project engineers and technical leads in integrated planning, systems-engineering execution, risk management, and cross-functional delivery practices.
**Requirements:**
- Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or related STEM discipline.
- Typically 8–12+ years of experience in systems engineering, project engineering, technical program management, aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomy, UAS, or similarly complex technical environment.
- Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional technical programs involving multiple engineering disciplines and delivering integrated products, capabilities, or customer solutions.
- Strong systems-engineering experience, including requirements management, traceability, interface management, system integration, verification and validation, test planning/execution, and configuration or technical-baseline management.
- Proven program-management capability, including integrated planning and scheduling, scope management, resource coordination, risk and issue management, stakeholder communication, and execution reporting.
- Experience coordinating multiple Agile teams or technical workstreams toward shared releases, demonstrations, system-level milestones, or customer deliveries.
- Strong written, verbal, and executive communication skills, with ability to explain technical status, risks, and tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance.
- Willingness to travel up to 25%.
**Preferred Qualifications:**
- Active DoD security clearance.
- PMP certification, INCOSE certification, SAFe Release Train Engineer certification, or equivalent demonstrated experience in technical program, systems-engineering, or scaled-Agile leadership.
- Experience as Technical Program Manager, Release Train Engineer, Integrated Product Team lead, Project Engineer, systems-integration lead, or comparable cross-functional technical leadership role.
- Experience facilitating multi-team planning, dependency management, program execution reviews, system demonstrations, release-readiness reviews, and continuous-improvement activities.
- Experience with Jira, Confluence, Jira Align, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Azure DevOps, Jama, Polarion, DOORS, Cameo, or comparable planning, requirements, and systems-engineering tools.
- Experience with UAS, autonomy, robotics, AI-enabled systems, mission systems, sensors, payloads, communications/datalinks, SATCOM, navigation, flight test, or fielded defense systems.
- Experience supporting DoD, intelligence-community, aviation, maritime, international-defense, or other mission-critical customer programs.
- Experience with manufacturing, production readiness, supplier coordination, cybersecurity, airworthiness/clearance-to-fly, configuration management, export compliance, or field deployment.
