Assistant Product Owner, CCA Mission Autonomy (Platform Integration) (R5849)

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems.

The Assistant Product Owner (APO) supports Shield AI's delivery of mission autonomy (MA) to the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program.

Responsibilities

The APO will work in collaboration with the Shoal Lead, Systems Engineering Lead, and four Feature Crew Leads and report directly to the Product Owner/Manager, who is part of the program leadership team.

Key responsibilities include:

• Working with the Product Owner and Chief Engineer to understand customer product needs and determine priority
• Eliciting and validating needs and priorities from the customer and operational subject matter experts
• Translating customer intent into user stories and epic descriptions
• Owning day-to-day management of the Shoal 1 epic backlog across feature crews
• Providing a product perspective to feature crews at Shoal 1-specific sprint planning and review ceremonies
• Managing dependencies across shoals and carrying integration decisions through to the respective shoal or feature crew leads
• Supporting development and integration of the operator interface
• Keeping protected weekly hands-on time in the operator interface
• Acting as translator across disciplines
• Supporting other shoals through observation of operator-in-the-loop (OITL) activity and providing feedback in review sessions

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, aerospace engineering, cognitive systems engineering, human factors, or a related technical field; or equivalent military or operational experience
• 3+ years in product ownership or a related field
• Hands-on proficiency with Jira and Confluence as systems of record
• Demonstrated ability to hold an integrated view of a complex product across distributed documentation and multiple engineering disciplines
• Willingness to become a hands-on user of the operator interface
• Working technical fluency in mission autonomy, autonomous systems, flight software, ground control systems or HMIs, or avionics interfaces
• Exceptional written and oral communication, and proven ability to translate information across technical audiences
• Strong problem solving skills, including sound decision making and judgment under ambiguity with minimal supervision
• Ability to work effectively, both independently and as part of a team
• Must be a U.S. person as defined under ITAR
• Active U.S. DoD Secret security clearance is required at time of hire

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting a U.S. Air Force, Navy, or joint aviation program of record involving uncrewed or autonomous collaborative platforms
• Familiarity with the A-GRA, A-GRI, UCI messaging, or other modular open systems architectures
• Experience with airworthiness, functional safety, or assurance-driven software processes and certification artifacts
• Exposure to flight autonomy, vehicle management systems, or aircraft-level integration and flight test campaigns
• Experience with C2 or HMI products for uncrewed systems
• Formal grounding in product, human factors, or cognitive systems engineering methods
• Experience supporting OITL evaluations, test and evaluation campaigns, or functional check flight activity as a product or human factors representative
• Proficiency with systems and process modeling tools
• Experience establishing decision logs, change control, or product governance in a program that previously lacked them
• Experience coordinating directly with platform manufacturers, primes, or government program offices
• Military aviation, flight test, or uncrewed aircraft systems operational experience
• Advanced degree in engineering, business, or related field
• Current or prior Special Access Program (SAP) or Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) access

Additional Information

• Salary: USD 160,000-250,000 per-year-salary
• Full-time regular employee offer package: Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
• Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.