Head of Product Design

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in product design, UX design, human factors, or a related field.
• A proven record of designing and launching complex technical products, such as developer tools, platforms, infrastructure software, data-intensive applications, or enterprise systems.
• Strong technical fluency and the ability to work effectively with senior engineering leaders on architecture, technical constraints, and software development workflows.
• Significant experience conducting user research and turning findings into product strategy and design solutions.
• Demonstrated ability to influence product direction and organizational decisions without direct authority.
• A strong understanding of AI-enabled product experiences, including conversational interfaces, human-in-the-loop workflows, AI-supported decision-making, and agent-based systems.
• Experience defining user experiences in emerging technology areas where established standards and workflows are still developing.
• Experience building and retaining high-performing design teams.
• A strong portfolio demonstrating strategic thinking and hands-on design execution.
• Preferred: Experience with developer platforms, SDKs, cloud infrastructure products, DevOps tools, or engineering productivity software.
• Preferred: Direct experience with AI/ML platforms, MLOps workflows, foundation-model-enabled products, copilots, or agentic systems.
• Preferred: Familiarity with autonomy, robotics, simulation, digital twins, mission systems, physical AI, or related development workflows, including testing, evaluation, deployment, and operations.
• Preferred: Portfolio examples featuring command-and-control systems, mission-planning interfaces, operational dashboards, or real-time decision-support tools.
• Preferred: Ability to design across integrated hardware and software systems.
• Preferred: Exposure to defense technology, aerospace, robotics, or other regulated, mission-critical, or high-consequence operational environments.

Responsibilities:

• Lead customer research across product development, customer engagement, and solutions teams to identify pain points, workflows, unmet needs, and product opportunities.
• Build scalable ways to collect, synthesize, and share user insights throughout product development.
• Turn customer and operational feedback into product recommendations, requirements, and design initiatives.
• Design end-to-end workflows for autonomy development, simulation, testing, analysis, deployment, and operations.
• Create intuitive experiences for technical users, including autonomy engineers, software developers, operators, and mission planners.
• Make complex system architectures, data flows, infrastructure tools, and AI workflows easier to understand and use.
• Guide the product experience end to end, including training, documentation, tutorials, and workflows, so users can realize the products value.
• Work with Product Managers to shape product vision, roadmap priorities, and go-to-market strategies.
• Align Product, Engineering, Design, and executive leaders through clear narratives, prototypes, and visual storytelling.
• Promote user-centered decisions in a highly technical, engineering-led environment.
• Establish and develop design standards, systems, UX principles, and product design practices across our organization.
• Improve product design quality, usability, consistency, and customer experience.
• Mentor a small design team, shape design culture, and remain directly involved in important design work.
• Highlight designs contribution to successful products and champion its impact across our organization.
• Define experiences for AI-assisted autonomy development, simulation, testing, deployment, and operational workflows.
• Design human-AI collaboration that helps users work effectively with AI agents, copilots, and foundation-model-powered systems.
• Partner with Product, AI Research, and Engineering on interaction patterns for agent orchestration, autonomy generation, scenario and test generation, and mission planning.
• Develop approaches to trust, transparency, explainability, and human oversight in AI-assisted workflows.
• Help establish design patterns for Physical AI development platforms and agent-driven software systems.

Technologies:

• AI
• AI Agents
• Cloud
• DevOps
• Hardware
• Support
• MLOps
• Robotics
• UX UI Design

More

We are Shield AI, a venture-backed defense technology company working to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Our products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. Our offices and facilities span the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, and our technology supports operations worldwide. As Head of Product Design, you will lead the user experience vision for Hivemind, our autonomy development platform, helping make complex autonomy, robotics, AI, and developer workflows more intuitive. You will manage a team of designers, with the first 6–12 months focused primarily on research, design, prototyping, product discovery, and close partnership with Product and Engineering. The role is based in San Diego, California, or Washington, D.C., with a listed salary range of $230,000–$350,000; the San Mateo, California range is $280,000–$420,000. Regular full-time offers include pay within the applicable range, a bonus, benefits, and equity. Temporary employee packages include pay within the applicable range and a temporary benefits package, applicable after 60 days. Compensation depends on factors including skills, experience, credentials, and work location. Offers are contingent on a cleared background check and may include a reference check; military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. We are an equal opportunity workplace and affirmative action employer, and we provide accommodations for applicants with disabilities or other needs. We may use AI tools to assist with parts of recruitment, while final hiring decisions are made by people.

last updated 43 week of 2026