Head of Product Design Shield AI

• The Head of Product Design will define and lead the user experience vision for Hivemind, Shield AI’s autonomy development platform. This role is responsible for transforming complex autonomy, robotics, AI, and developer workflows into intuitive experiences that enable engineers, operators, and organizations to develop and deploy resilient autonomy at scale
• A major focus of this role will be shaping the next generation of AI-native and agent-driven workflows across the autonomy lifecycle. As Hivemind evolves from traditional software tooling toward AI-assisted autonomy development, simulation, evaluation, deployment, and operations, this leader will help invent entirely new ways for users to collaborate with AI systems, agents, and foundation-model-powered tools. The ideal candidate has deep experience designing AI products, developer platforms, or complex technical systems and can translate emerging AI capabilities into workflows that dramatically improve user productivity and outcomes
• This is a highly hands-on role as this leader will manage a team of elite designers. During the first 6–12 months, most of the time will be spent conducting user research, designing experiences, prototyping concepts, facilitating product discovery, and partnering directly with Product and Engineering teams to define the future of autonomy development
• User Research & Product Discovery
• Lead customer research efforts across product development, customer engagement, and solutions teams to identify pain points, workflows, unmet needs, and product opportunities
• Establish scalable mechanisms for gathering, synthesizing, and communicating user insights throughout the product development lifecycle
• Translate customer and operational feedback into actionable product recommendations, requirements, and design initiatives
• Product Design & User Experience
• Design end-to-end workflows across autonomy development, simulation, testing, analysis, deployment, and operations
• Create intuitive experiences for highly technical users including autonomy engineers, software developers, operators, and mission planners
• Simplify complex system architectures, data flows, infrastructure tooling, and AI workflows into understandable user experiences
• Own the end-to-end experience of the product including training, documentation, tutorials, and overall workflows – help our users get the most of the product
• Strategic Product Leadership
• Partner closely with Product Managers to shape product vision, roadmap priorities, and go-to-market strategies
• Drive alignment across Product, Engineering, Design, and Executive Leadership through compelling narratives, prototypes, and visual storytelling
• Advocate for user-centered decision making in a highly technical and engineering-driven environment
• Design Practice, Systems & Organizational Scale
• Establish and evolve design standards, design systems, UX principles, and product design best practices across Shield AI
• Raise the quality bar for product design, usability, consistency, and customer experience
• Grow the product design function by mentoring a small team of designers, shaping design culture, and staying actively involved in critical design work
• Champion design wins and impact across the organization, highlighting the important role design plays in delivering successful products
• AI-Native Product Design & Agentic Workflows
• Define the future user experience for AI-assisted autonomy development, simulation, testing, deployment, and operational workflows
• Design human-AI collaboration models that enable users to effectively leverage AI agents, copilots, and foundation-model-powered systems
• Partner with Product, AI Research, and Engineering teams to create new interaction patterns for agent orchestration, autonomy generation, scenario creation, test generation, and mission planning
• Develop frameworks for trust, transparency, explainability, and human oversight within AI-assisted workflows
• Help establish industry-leading design patterns for Physical AI development platforms and agent-driven software systems

Benefits

• Excellent Medical Coverage
• Mental Health Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Parental Leave
• Pet Insurance
• Flexible Work Hours
• Onsite Gym (DC)
• Gym Discount (San Diego)
• Free Parking
• Competitive Compensation
• Stock Benefits
• 401K Services and Match