Principal Technical Product Manager (R5249)

Shield AI•Washington, DC

6d•$220,000 - $330,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Special Projects team at Shield AI is an elite force within the office of the CTO, comprised of senior and highly experienced software engineering experts. This team's charter is to steer technology development towards strategic alignment with the CTO's vision by tactically integrating into teams and technologies across the organization. Individuals on this team make direct contributions to all three pillars of Hivemind, Shield AI's software ecosystem for developing and deploying intelligent teaming for aircraft. Hivemind includes EdgeOS (C++ middleware), Pilot (autonomy software), Forge (AI Factory for system design, development, and testing), and Commander (software and hardware for human interaction with Hivemind). The Special Projects team operates effectively within ambiguity, impacting the development of foundational Hivemind products and rapidly delivering low-TRL solutions. This involves working closely with product teams or developing reference implementations independently. The team also serves as a pipeline for product and solution engineering teams, rapidly expanding individuals' understanding of the Hivemind ecosystem and positioning them for technology leadership roles.

Requirements

8+ years of product management for deeply technical products; engineering or CS background.
Technical fluency: you read code, work APIs and CLIs from a terminal, and prototype with AI coding tools yourself.
Shipped developer tools, internal platforms, or AI/ML products — and drove their adoption.
Working fluency in LLM-based systems: agents, evaluation, context management, fine-tuning trade-offs.
Metrics-driven operating style: you define KPIs, instrument products, and report against thresholds and objectives.
Exceptional written communication — requirements, strategy docs, executive briefs.
Proven stakeholder management up to the executive level across engineering, product, and business functions.
Fluid intelligence that allows one to operate effectively in ambiguous conditions while finding opportunities to drive technical efforts and force multiply.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience as a software engineer.
Experience in defense, aerospace, or other regulated environments (CUI/ITAR, restricted or disconnected deployments).
Experience with enterprise data platforms (e.g. Databricks) and ERP/business-system integration.
Experience with safety-critical or assurance-driven software processes (requirements traceability, V&V, certification artifacts).
Experience taking zero-to-one internal products through incubation, adoption, and handoff.
Experience with robotics or autonomy products.

Responsibilities

Own product definition, roadmap, and metrics across the office of the CTO's agentic AI portfolio: an enterprise knowledge assistant (Brain), an agent-driven engineering platform (Springboard), and enterprise AI/data modernization and app development.
Translate CTO strategy into crisp requirements, milestones, exit criteria, and KPIs — then hold the line on them.
Drive adoption of internal platforms: reduce onboarding friction, instrument usage, track NPS and active users, and run developer advocacy and objection handling.
Shape product direction for foundation-model based autonomy architectures and model lifecycle tooling (evaluation, fine-tuning, verification, deployment).
Run continuous discovery with engineers, operators, and executive stakeholders; turn findings into prioritized backlogs.
Prioritize ruthlessly across competing initiatives with small teams and aggressive timelines.
Analyze the agentic tooling, enterprise AI platform, and foundation model ecosystem; recommend build/buy/partner positions to leadership.
Author strategy documents, product briefs, and executive updates that drive decisions.
Manage transitions of maturing products from incubation to owning organizations.