The Senior Director of Operations & Sustainment (O&S) is responsible for ensuring customers successfully deploy, operate, maintain, and evolve the company's software and VIDAR hardware products throughout their lifecycle. O&S owns the post-development operational ecosystem that enables Hivemind Vision (HMV) integrated VIDAR, Hivemind Enterprise (HME) software and the Hivemind Solutions (HMS) service to scale while maintaining exceptional customer satisfaction.
This is an exciting opportunity to build the Hivemind O&S organization from the ground up. The organization serves as the bridge between Product Engineering, Customer Success, and Field Operations by enabling successful product deployment, sustaining operational readiness, providing technical support, capturing customer feedback, and driving continuous improvement.
This role sits at the center of all Hivemind business lines, ensuring customer satisfaction post-delivery. This is a hands-on leadership role that requires both strong systems engineering instincts and the organizational discipline to build a team and establish the processes, systems, and engineering rigor necessary to support a growing customer base while ensuring issues rapidly inform future product development.
What you'll do:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Establish the organization, practices, tools, and ways of working which manage the following:
Product Deployment & Integration
Training, Documentation & Knowledge Enablement
Sustaining Engineering
Test & Evaluation
Customer Support Engineering
Operational Excellence & Engineering Enablement
Cross-Functional Leadership
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical field.
- 15 years of experience leading software operations, sustaining engineering, technical support, or product lifecycle organizations.
- Experience with government, defense, or mission-critical software systems
- Experience supporting sustainment or ILS organizations for integrated hardware and software products.
- Demonstrated success building operational organizations from the ground up supporting both product and customer delivery teams.
- Strong systems engineering mindset with experience establishing scalable operational processes.
- Experience leading cross-functional technical teams through complex customer issues and product improvements.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience in AI/ML platforms or autonomous systems
- Experience with Software Development Kits (SDKs), APIs, or developer platforms.
- Experience supporting both commercial software products and customized customer solutions.
- Familiarity with technical training development, knowledge management, and documentation systems.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field
- 15 years of experience leading software operations, sustaining engineering, technical support, or product lifecycle organizations
- Experience with government, defense, or mission-critical software systems
- Experience supporting sustainment or integrated logistics support organizations for integrated hardware and software products
- Demonstrated success building operational organizations from the ground up supporting product and customer delivery teams
- Strong systems engineering mindset with experience establishing scalable operational processes
- Experience leading cross-functional technical teams through complex customer issues and product improvements
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
- Experience in AI/ML platforms or autonomous systems
- Experience with Software Development Kits, APIs, or developer platforms
- Experience supporting both commercial software products and customized customer solutions
- Familiarity with technical training development, knowledge management, and documentation systems
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
-
Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage is described as excellent, with dental/vision and mental‑health support, and ancillary protections like life and disability appearing in benefit summaries. The breadth and perceived affordability of coverage are highlighted as a standout component of the package.
-
Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is featured alongside enhanced maternity benefits, fertility and childcare support, and onsite resources such as a Mother’s Room. These elements are positioned as competitive and above the minimal baseline for the company’s stage.
-
Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity is granted to all full‑time hires, with RSUs, double‑trigger tax timing, and tools to model scenarios (e.g., through Carta Tax). Communications also reference a transition from options to RSUs, reinforcing access and maturity of ownership programs.
Shield AI Insights
What We Do
At Shield AI, you won't wait years to see your work reach the field. You'll build hardware and software that operates in the real world right now, in the hands of the people who depend on it. Hivemind, our AI pilot, has been flying since 2018. It has flown more than 30 platforms, including an F-16, and it now sits under a U.S. Air Force production contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft. When you write code or shape a system here, you contribute to technology with a proven flight record and a clear production future. V-BAT flies intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions with an operational record that stretches from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific. It delivers eyes where they matter most, in the most demanding conditions on earth. The teams behind it watch their work get tested where the stakes are real. X-BAT takes its first flight this year. It's an AI-piloted fighter that needs no runway, built to operate where traditional aircraft can't. Join now and you help shape a program at its earliest, most formative stage. That's the kind of ground-floor work that defines a career. Do the most impactful work of your life, on problems that matter. Autonomy at this level asks a lot of you. You'll take on problems in perception, planning, and control that few teams anywhere are equipped to solve. You'll work across disciplines, from aerospace and robotics to machine learning and systems engineering, alongside people who hold themselves to an exacting standard and expect the same from you. Our mission is clear: protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. That purpose runs through every decision, every design review, and every deployment. It's why the work here carries a weight you can feel. Ready to join our mission? Explore our open roles and find where you fit.
Why Work With Us
Founded in 2015 by a former Navy SEAL, Shield AI builds AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft. Veterans aren't an afterthought here, they're at every level. It's why the work carries weight: AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft flying real missions, from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific, protecting service members and civilians.
Gallery
%203.jpg)
Shield AI Teams
.jpg)
Shield AI Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
