Director, USAF Growth Campaign Leader (X-BAT Family of Systems) (R6358)

Shield AI•Washington, DC

2d•$190,000 - $290,000

About The Position

The Director, USAF Growth Campaign Leader leads the internal operating rhythm for Shield AI’s UAS pursuits with the United States Air Force across the X-BAT Family of Systems (FoS). The role integrates information across USAF opportunities and gives the VP, Mission Solutions for the X-BAT FoS a decision-ready view of campaign health, priorities, dependencies, risks, mitigations, and resource requirements. Opportunity-focused Go-To-Market (GTM) leaders retain ownership of customer relationships, capture and win strategies, account plans, price-to-win, proposal content, and pursuit outcomes; this Director enables their success through coordination and campaign operations. The Director connects USAF pursuits with relevant activity across other Services, allied and partner nations, product and engineering, government approvals, aircraft and test availability, internal investment, and industrial strategy. They identify shared dependencies and resource conflicts, help sequence competing demands, and coordinate cross-functional support. The role maintains the authoritative USAF campaign picture and runs campaign reviews, risk and dependency management, executive dashboards, action tracking, investment recommendations, and escalations requiring VP or executive attention. This is a senior, high-visibility role with authority across concurrent USAF pursuits representing a multi-billion-dollar addressable opportunity. It is a leadership-by-influence position that leverages dedicated capture-operations and analyst support, with an expectation to build the team as the portfolio grows. The Director develops and co-stewards annual campaign and indirect investment against prioritized returns, holds a standing seat in USAF bid/no-bid and investment-prioritization reviews, and sets the agenda for the executive campaign review. The position is described as a pipeline role toward senior Department of the Navy growth or general-management leadership at Shield AI. The Director is accountable for the integrated USAF campaign plan, operating cadence and campaign-health reporting, escalation of cross-campaign dependencies, conflicts and risks, the path-to-win roadmap, and investment-prioritization and sequencing recommendations. External customer engagement is in support of, and at the invitation of, the responsible GTM lead. The role also personally drives execution of critical customer responses, including RFIs, RFPs, CSOs, and other solicitation vehicles, while the GTM lead retains responsibility for win strategy, price-to-win, and proposal content. Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-technology company whose mission is to protect 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. The company says its technology supports operations worldwide. Its stated core values are Do What Honor Dictates, Live as a Servant Leader, and Pursue Excellence; the role particularly calls for servant leadership. Shield AI actively seeks candidates with U.S. Air Force operational, staff, or acquisition experience and supports military-to-civilian transitions.

Requirements

Be a U.S. person as defined by ITAR (22 CFR 120.62).
Be able to obtain and maintain a DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and Special Access Program (SAP) eligibility.
Have 12–20+ years of experience in capture management, program management, strategic operations, business operations, technical program management, or a comparable cross-functional leadership role.
Demonstrate success leading highly complex initiatives with multiple interdependent workstreams across engineering, business development, operations, finance, and executive leadership.
Have working knowledge of USAF funding and fielding processes, including SAF/AQ and HAF staffing, PEO and program-office dynamics, the PPBE/POM cycle, rapid-acquisition pathways such as OTAs, CSOs, SBIR/STRATFI, AFWERX, and transition from prototype to program of record.
Be able to influence without direct authority and drive accountability across functions and geographies.
Have strong executive communication skills, including leadership briefings, dashboards, metrics, and decision-support materials that lead to decisions.
Demonstrate operational rigor in integrated schedules, critical paths, milestones, action tracking, dependency management, and risk mitigation.
Be comfortable working in ambiguous, fast-changing environments with competing priorities across multiple time zones.
Show a service orientation toward supported GTM leads and sound judgment about when to escalate versus resolve issues quietly.

Nice To Haves

Active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and current Special Access Program accesses.
Experience supporting DoW, aerospace, autonomy, robotics, aviation, or defense-technology organizations.
Experience in business development, capture, proposal operations, strategic planning, or growth organizations managing multiple concurrent U.S. Government pursuits.
Familiarity with export and international mechanisms affecting USAF pursuits, including foreign disclosure determinations, FMS/DCS pathways, and security cooperation planning.
Experience building executive dashboards, KPIs, operational scorecards, or portfolio health metrics.
Experience supporting executive staff, chief-of-staff organizations, Strategy and Operations teams, or enterprise PMOs.
Fluency with integrated schedule and work-management tools such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or Jira.
An advanced degree or relevant certification such as an MBA, PMP, or Lean Six Sigma certification is a plus but not required.
U.S. Air Force operational, staff, or acquisition experience.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain one authoritative integrated USAF campaign picture across X-BAT FoS pursuits, covering strategy status, critical path, milestones, dependencies, decision points, and campaign health.
Enable GTM leads with templates, playbooks, data, competitive inputs, cost and schedule inputs, and cross-functional access needed to build and execute their capture plans.
Coordinate engineering, product, export, legal, contracts, finance, government relations, and business operations against a prioritized campaign plan.
Identify cross-campaign competition for aircraft, test windows, engineering effort, approval bandwidth, or indirect funding, and present executive leadership with tradeoffs and recommendations.
Run campaign reviews, gate reviews, risk registers, action tracking, and executive dashboards to support timely decisions on bid/no-bid, investment, and prioritization.
Work with Finance and Business Operations to track campaign investment, indirect spend, and resource planning against campaign priorities and expected returns.
Capture lessons learned and translate them into repeatable tools, templates, metrics, and playbooks to improve future campaigns.
Support a culture of accountability, urgency, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Personally coordinate and drive critical customer solicitation responses, including RFIs, RFPs, CSOs, and other vehicles, by assembling cross-functional inputs, managing response schedules, and driving on-time submission.
Develop and co-steward annual campaign and indirect investment against prioritized campaign returns.
Set the agenda for executive campaign reviews and participate in USAF bid/no-bid and investment-prioritization reviews.
Support GTM leads’ execution while preserving their ownership of customer engagement, capture strategy, win strategy, price-to-win, proposal content, and opportunity bid/no-bid recommendations.