# Principal, Customer Success (R5246) **Company**: Shield AI **Location**: Washington, DC **Work arrangement**: onsite **Experience**: senior **Job type**: full-time **Salary**: USD 150,000-230,000 per-year-salary **Category**: Operations **Industry**: Defense Technology **Apply**: https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/03c7b451-f3ea-44e6-b9e0-2d39d4c04398?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply **Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_3e6392e2-8a0 ## 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. 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. ## Responsibilities: - 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 executive briefings as needed. - Own customer health dashboards, risk registers, executive reporting, account plans, success plan templates, CAP dashboards, and operating metrics. - Define and track indicators such as mission readiness, adoption, training progress, fleet availability, support responsiveness, issue aging, customer sentiment, renewal or expansion risk, and executive engagement health. - Build a culture of urgency, ownership, operational excellence, professionalism, transparency, and customer advocacy across the Customer Success team. ## Requirements: - 10+ years of experience in customer success, customer operations, account management, program management, field operations, professional services, aviation operations, defense technology, aerospace, or mission-critical enterprise technology. - 10+ years of experience leading customer-facing teams or managing customer success, account management, support, field operations, or program teams. - Demonstrated experience managing escalated, at-risk, executive-level, or mission-critical customer accounts. - Experience operating structured escalation, customer health, critical account, executive governance, or customer recovery processes. - Strong executive presence and ability to communicate clearly with senior military, government, enterprise, and internal executive stakeholders. - Ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity, urgency, conflict, and high operational stakes. - Strong understanding of customer lifecycle management, adoption, sustainment, readiness, support, renewals, and expansion motions. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive briefings, account plans, recovery plans, and leadership updates. - Ability to travel up to 15% and work effectively with customers and teams in operational, field, and headquarters environments. - Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance. ## Preferred Qualifications: - Experience in defense, aerospace, autonomous systems, aviation, UAS, software-defined systems, military operations, or operational technology deployed in austere environments. - Experience supporting Department of Defense, U.S. military services, allied defense customers, or government customers. - Experience with VTOL UAS, aviation operations, ISR, mission systems, autonomy, deployed operations, aircraft sustainment, or mission-critical field operations. - Prior military service or direct experience working with operational military units. - Experience with structured Critical Accounts Programs, enterprise escalation frameworks, technical account management, customer success operations, or executive sponsor programs. - Familiarity with Salesforce, Gainsight, Jira, Confluence, Tableau, Power BI, or similar customer success, support, and reporting systems. - Active Secret or Top Secret clearance. ## Skills ### Required - customer success - account management - program management - field operations - professional services - aviation operations - defense technology - aerospace - mission-critical enterprise technology - leadership - communication - project management ### Nice to have - defense - autonomous systems - aviation - UAS - software-defined systems - military operations - operational technology - VTOL UAS - ISR - mission systems - autonomy - deployed operations - aircraft sustainment - mission-critical field operations - structured Critical Accounts Programs - enterprise escalation frameworks - technical account management - customer success operations - executive sponsor programs - Salesforce - Gainsight - Jira - Confluence - Tableau - Power BI --- Source: [Apply at jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/shieldai/03c7b451-f3ea-44e6-b9e0-2d39d4c04398?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)