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Shield AI

Robot type
Drone · Defense
Location
San DiegoCaliforniaUSA
Job type
Product
Posted
Jun 19, 2026
Salary
$220,000–$330,000 a year
Full-time

Principal Technical Product Manager (R5249)

Job description

The Special Projects team at Shield AI is an elite force within the office of the CTO. It consists of a group of very senior (L5-L8) and highly experienced software engineering experts from diverse fields (aerospace, robotics, cloud infrastructure, game development, interactive media design, ...). The charter of this group is to steer technology development towards strategic alignment with the CTO's vision, through tactical insertion into teams and technologies across the organization.

The Special Projects team is chartered to operate effectively within ambiguity. While this team does not own any software products, it tactically and strategically impacts the development of all foundational…

Job 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…
  • 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.

Job 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.

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