Forward Deployed Product Manager, Public Sector

Scale AI•Washington, DC

1d•$248,800 - $345,000•Onsite

About The Position

Scale is accelerating the development of AI across the world's most important organizations, including the U.S. Department of War (DoW), its constituent services, and the broader U.S. National Security industry. The Product Manager, Public Sector will lead Scale's product efforts across two connected focus areas — military planning and real-time AI and Alerting (LUX) — shaping real production outcomes and translating messy operational reality into high-signal input for the core platform. This is not a roadmap PM, a CSM, or a solutions engineer. This PM owns product outcomes for a cross-cutting portfolio of AI and data capabilities: earning deep trust with senior military, civilian, and mission stakeholders, driving deployments to production inside classified and operationally constrained environments, identifying where the product is the bottleneck vs. execution, and feeding durable, specific signal back to Scale's platform team. The best candidates have shipped AI or real-time data products into defense or other large, security-constrained organizations and can tell the difference between a customer's stated request, their actual problem, and what the platform should do.

Requirements

Core Competencies: Enterprise deployment ownership: has driven AI/ML or complex/real-time software products from contract to production at scale — including near-zero-to-one, with no real users yet — with real integration, real security constraints, and real change management.
Domain fluency: working knowledge of the military planning process and modeling/simulation tools (e.g., Joint Planning Process, AFSIM), and/or the tradeoffs inherent to real-time, event-driven, high-throughput data architectures and their implications for AI agents — and how each shapes product decisions.
Product judgment in the field: translates customer reality into product direction, not just feature requests; can say no credibly and explain why.
Customer trust-building: earns and maintains trust with demanding senior military, civilian, and mission stakeholders over multi-quarter engagements; manages conflict without eroding the relationship.
Technical translation: bridges the gap between customer engineering/planning teams and Scale platform engineers; adds interpretation rather than simply relaying messages.
Operating in ambiguity and constrained environments: creates structure where there is none; makes decisions with incomplete information inside classified settings; does not wait for fully defined requirements.
Clear, precise communication: adjusts for audience (senior leader vs. engineer vs. PM); writes and speaks at the right level of detail; does not over- or under-explain.
Must-Have: Active TOP SECRET security clearance (TS/SCI eligibility preferred).
6+ years in product management, technical program management, or a customer-facing product ownership role, including experience operating at an L6 (senior/staff) level of scope and autonomy.
Direct experience working with the U.S. Department of War (DoW) or the broader U.S. national security community.
Working knowledge of at least one of the following, with an ability to speak credibly to the other: The military planning process (e.g., the Joint Planning Process) and modeling/simulation systems (e.g., AFSIM). Real-time streaming data systems — event-driven architectures, low-latency pipelines, and high-throughput data processing — and how they behave in production.
Demonstrated record of shipping AI or data products into large, constrained, classified, or highly regulated organizations — not pilots or proofs-of-concept. You can name the customer, the scale, the integration, and what production actually looked like.
Extreme ownership and follow-through: closes loops without reminders, drives outcomes across teams without formal authority, holds self and others to commitments.
Comfortable operating with senior military/civilian/mission stakeholders and senior engineers simultaneously; credible presence in high-stakes rooms on both sides.
Strong judgment under pressure: makes good calls quickly with incomplete information, knows when to escalate vs. resolve, does not generate thrash.
Technical fluency sufficient to hold a real conversation with a platform engineer about architectural tradeoffs — not deep coding, but genuine comprehension of how systems work in production.
Ability to shape a cross-cutting set of solutions across multiple stakeholders and use cases, rather than customer-specific solutions.
Ability to travel, including to classified facilities.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with AI/ML platform products — agentic capabilities, human-agent interaction, large-scale data, some T&E; or data labeling, RLHF, fine-tuning workflows, and model evaluation pipelines.
Hands-on familiarity with streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Flink, Kinesis) or the operational systems that consume them.
Experience in a startup or early-stage environment where process didn't exist and had to be created.
Prior forward-deployed or embedded role (consulting, field PM, solutions engineering with ownership).
Prior military service or DoD/DoW civilian experience in an operations, planning, or acquisitions role.

Responsibilities

Own product outcomes across Scale's military planning portfolio and/or its highest-impact national security accounts for LUX, spanning multiple DoW and National Security stakeholders and use cases. You are the accountable PM for product delivery and customer value.
Translate operational reality into high-signal product input for engineering and platform teams — specific, evidence-backed product perspective with tradeoffs articulated, not requirements docs. This includes military planning workflows (e.g., the Joint Planning Process) and modeling/simulation requirements (e.g., AFSIM), as well as real customer workflows, latency/throughput constraints, and mission priorities for LUX.
Build trusted advisory relationships with senior military leaders (flag/general officer and senior civilian equivalents), National Security customer stakeholders, and senior technical leads. Become the reliable escalation point on the Scale side before issues surface externally.
Drive deployments from contract to production inside classified and operationally constrained environments — whether that means military planning workflows or LUX's low-latency, high-throughput, mission-critical data systems. You know what "production-ready" means inside DoW, and you close the gap.
Distinguish where the product is the constraint from where execution, integration, policy, or change management is the constraint. Drive each type of blocker to resolution through the right channel.
Shape a cross-cutting set of solutions spanning multiple stakeholders, echelons, and use cases, rather than owning a single point deployment.
Partner closely with Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) teams and Platform Capability teams so the account runs as a coordinated team, not a set of parallel workstreams.
Identify and develop expansion opportunities grounded in demonstrated customer value.
Represent customer reality to the platform and leadership with enough credibility that it changes decisions.
Balance competing requirements across CCMDs and service components that must collaborate despite differing needs — distinct from building for a single customer.
Travel as required to customer sites, including classified facilities.