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

Shield AI•Dallas, TX

13h

About The Position

Shield AI is hiring a Director, USAF Growth Campaign Leader to lead the operating rhythm and portfolio coordination supporting the company’s U.S. Air Force unmanned aircraft system pursuits across the X-BAT Family of Systems. The role integrates information across USAF opportunities and gives the VP, Mission Solutions for the X-BAT FoS a clear, decision-ready view of campaign health, priorities, dependencies, risks, mitigations, and resource needs. Opportunity-focused Go-To-Market (GTM) leaders retain ownership of customer relationships, capture and win strategies, price-to-win, proposal content, and pursuit outcomes; this Director enables their success by coordinating cross-functional support and managing shared dependencies and resources. The Director maintains the authoritative USAF campaign plan and runs campaign reviews, gate reviews, risk and dependency management, executive dashboards, action tracking, investment recommendations, and escalations. The role coordinates USAF pursuits with activity across other Services and allied and partner nations, product and engineering, government approvals, aircraft and test availability, internal investment, and industrial strategy. It has authority to identify and elevate cross-campaign tradeoffs, holds a standing seat in USAF bid/no-bid and investment-prioritization reviews, and sets the agenda for the executive campaign review. The role stewards annual campaign and indirect investment with Finance and Business Operations, and is expected to build dedicated capture-operations and analyst support as the portfolio grows. The Director also personally drives execution of critical customer responses, including RFI, RFP, CSO, and other solicitation vehicles, by coordinating inputs and schedules and ensuring timely submission. External customer engagement is performed in support of, and at the invitation of, the responsible GTM lead. The position is described as a pipeline role toward senior Department of the Navy growth or general-management leadership at Shield AI. Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-technology company whose products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. Its core values are Do What Honor Dictates, Live as a Servant Leader, and Pursue Excellence. The company 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 complex initiatives with interdependent workstreams across engineering, business development, operations, finance, and executive leadership.
Have working knowledge of how USAF programs are funded and fielded, including SAF/AQ and HAF staffing processes, PEO and program-office dynamics, the PPBE/POM cycle, rapid-acquisition pathways such as OTAs, CSOs, SBIR/STRATFI and AFWERX, and transition from prototype to program of record.
Be able to influence without direct authority and drive accountability across functions and geographies.
Demonstrate strong executive communication skills, including leadership briefings, dashboards, metrics, and decision-support materials that lead to decisions.
Have strong operational rigor in integrated schedules, critical paths, milestones, action tracking, dependency management, and risk mitigation.
Be comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-changing environments with competing priorities across multiple time zones.
Have a service orientation toward the GTM leads supported by the role and 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; this is a plus but not required.
U.S. Air Force operational, staff, or acquisition experience.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain the integrated USAF campaign picture across X-BAT FoS pursuits, including strategy status, critical paths, milestones, dependencies, decision points, and campaign health.
Equip GTM leads with templates, playbooks, data, competitive inputs, cost and schedule inputs, and cross-functional access to support their capture plans.
Coordinate engineering, product, export, legal, contracts, finance, government relations, and business operations around 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 and 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 priorities and expected returns.
Capture lessons learned and turn them into repeatable tools, templates, metrics, and playbooks; support accountability, urgency, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Drive execution of critical customer responses, including RFI, RFP, CSO, and other solicitation vehicles, by assembling cross-functional inputs, managing response schedules, and driving on-time submission.
Provide an integrated USAF campaign plan, operating cadence and campaign-health reporting, escalation of cross-campaign dependencies and risks, path-to-win roadmap, and investment-prioritization and sequencing recommendations.
Support external customer engagement only in support of, and at the invitation of, the responsible GTM lead.