Product Manager - DefenseOS

Job description

Job responsibilities

• Own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for DefenseOS — defining how Applied's commercial VehicleOS is adapted into a navy warship operating system, the first instantiation of this broadly applicable defense…
• Lead customer and user discovery directly with Navy program offices, operators, and crews to translate operational needs, acquisition requirements, and field constraints into a prioritized product roadmap.
• Define the product strategy for a zonal architecture — location-based zone controllers and centralized compute replacing a federated, domain-based design — including how it integrates with existing defense-unique…
• Write clear requirements, define success metrics, and make the prioritization and scope trade-offs that keep engineering focused on the highest-value, field-relevant work.
• Partner closely with engineering, hardware/integration, and operations to sequence delivery across simulation, integration lab, and live-platform testing on unmanned surface vessels and traditional surface combatants.
• Own the trade-offs between speed, quality, and scope under acquisition and field constraints.
• Work with design to shape operator interfaces and workflows grounded in how crews actually operate.
• Partner with defense customers and shipbuilders/integrators as a design-informed product lead, translating their needs into the roadmap.

Job requirements

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field (Computer Science, Engineering, or related) or equivalent experience; advanced degree or deep technical background a plus.
• 8+ years of product management experience shipping complex technical products, including owning a product line end to end, ideally platforms spanning both hardware and software, real-time/embedded, or systems-of-systems.
• Demonstrated ability to own a product end to end as an individual contributor: vision, roadmap, requirements, prioritization, launch, and iteration against measurable outcomes.
• Thrives as an IC — comfortable owning a product area and driving cross-functional outcomes through influence rather than managing direct reports.
• Strong technical literacy — enough to engage credibly with engineers on architecture trade-offs (e.g., zonal versus federated domain architectures, hardware/software integration, interfaces and data flow) and make…
• Experience defining product strategy for integrating with legacy, proprietary, or closed third-party systems that lack modern software and data interfaces — deciding what to bridge and how to sequence the integration…
• Skilled at customer and user discovery: translating ambiguous operational problems into clear, prioritized requirements.
• Comfort in a fast-paced, highly ambiguous environment, and the ability to make and defend trade-offs between speed, quality, and scope.