Assistant Product Owner, CCA Mission Autonomy (Platform Integration) (R5849)

🏢 Shield AI · 📍 Washington, D.C. · 💼 onsite · ⏰ Full Time Employee 💰 $160,000 - $250,000 / yr

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Position Summary & Responsibilities

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Job Description:

The Assistant Product Owner (APO) supports Shield AI's delivery of mission autonomy (MA) to the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program — the first time that USAF has decoupled, for procurement purposes, MA from the airframe as a standalone capability. In this context, the ‘product’ is the Autonomy Implementation package, including Mission Autonomy itself, the Human Machine Interface (HMI) software, A-GRA compliance, mission systems, training, cybersecurity, and the full suite of implementation/installation software.

Shield AI’s CCA programs adopt an agile framework and are organized as a leadership tier overseeing multiple shoals (from platform integration to autonomy capabilities), each with multiple feature crews. In the first instance, the APO will support the Platform Integration and Support shoal (Shoal 1), which is responsible for integrating MA with multiple platforms and with the operator interface. The APO will work in

🎯 Candidate Preparation Guide For Shield AI Applicants

Key Role Competencies & Evaluation Highlights

Key Role Focus:

Testing raw first-principles engineering capability, intense mission-alignment with national defense, and high tolerance for high-stakes failure.

📋 Preparation Priorities (Key Areas to Clarify):

1. Academic or theoretical bias with no appreciation for hardware-in-the-loop and edge-computing constraints.
2. Lack of genuine conviction regarding the national security mission.
3. Defensiveness when receiving intense, direct technical critique from interviewers.

✨ Recommended Role Alignment Hook:

I apply first-principles engineering to build robust, edge-computed AI systems designed to operate flawlessly in contested, high-stakes environments.

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