Senior Director, Hivemind Operations & Sustainment (R5855)

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.

What you'll do:

Establish the organization, practices, tools, and ways of working which manage the following: Product Deployment & Integration Lead teams responsible for installation, integration, and operational deployment of the HME Software within customer environments. Develop repeatable deployment methodologies, tools, and best practices that reduce deployment timelines and improve customer outcomes. Support direct HME customers integrating and building upon the HME, HMS teams delivering customized customer solutions, and HMV customers integrating VIDAR and associated software. Training, Documentation & Knowledge Enablement Own the strategy and execution for customer education and operational knowledge management. Maintain and continuously improve training curriculum, technical publications, installation guides, troubleshooting documentation, and operational manuals. Develop knowledge transfer materials that enable customers to effectively deploy, configure, maintain, troubleshoot, and enhance their systems. Produce technical content and playbooks for Forward Deployed Engineers, Customer Support Engineers, and field personnel to resolve recurring issues and efficiently collect diagnostic data. Sustaining Engineering Lead engineering efforts supporting products operating in customer environments. Track and manage customer configurations and upgrades. Provide technical expertise for deployment support, issue resolution, and operational readiness. Ensure technical issues are documented, reproduced, prioritized, and communicated effectively to HMV, HME, and HMS Engineering organizations. Drive root cause analysis and corrective actions that improve product reliability and customer experience. Test & Evaluation Drive rapid validation and verification activities supporting customer-critical hardware repairs, bug fixes and software updates. Develop lightweight but rigorous test methodologies for sustaining engineering changes. Coordinate closely with Engineering to accelerate customer-impacting releases. Customer Support Engineering Own the technical support engineering organization serving as the initial point of contact for customer-reported issues and feature requests. Establish technical triage processes that rapidly classify, prioritize, and route customer issues. Provide technically proficient support beyond traditional call-center functions. Define service level objectives and operational metrics for customer responsiveness. Ensure customer feedback is systematically captured and incorporated into product planning as appropriate. Operational Excellence & Engineering Enablement Establish the systems engineering discipline, operational processes, and governance supporting all Operations & Sustainment functions. Define standard operating procedures, workflows, quality standards, and engineering best practices. Develop operational metrics and dashboards to monitor deployment performance, customer support effectiveness, issue resolution, and sustainment health. Drive continuous improvement initiatives that increase efficiency, scalability, and customer satisfaction. Cross-Functional Leadership Serve as the operational interface between Engineering, Program Management, Customer Success, Forward Deployed Engineering, and Customer Support. Translate operational insights and customer feedback into actionable product improvements. Partner with HMV, HME, and HMS leadership to ensure sustainment capabilities evolve alongside product growth. Balance customer responsiveness with long-term product quality and engineering priorities.