Shield AI is seeking a Senior Manager, Customer Success to establish, lead, and scale the Aircraft Division Customer Success function supporting V-BAT and X-BAT customers. This leader will manage a team of Customer Success Managers and ensure customers achieve sustained mission value, operational readiness, product adoption
The Senior Manager will define the Customer Success strategy, operating model, organizational structure, performance expectations, and engagement standards for U.S. government, allied defense, and strategic commercial customers. This role requires a leader who can build a high-performing customer-facing team while remaining directly engaged with complex, high-priority, and strategically sensitive accounts.
This position will also lead the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program, establishing the governance and operating discipline required to identify customer risk early, coordinate cross-functional recovery, maintain executive visibility, and drive issues to measurable closure. The Senior Manager will serve as a senior customer advocate and ensure customer challenges result in lasting improvements across product, operations, training, sustainment, and support.
What you'll do:
- Lead and Scale the Customer Success Function
- Establish and lead the Aircraft Division Customer Success function supporting V-BAT and X-BAT customers across U.S. government, allied defense, and strategic commercial accounts.
- Manage, coach, and develop a team of Customer Success Managers responsible for customer adoption, operational readiness, mission value, and long-term account success.
- Define team structure, roles, responsibilities, account assignments, performance expectations, and career development plans.
- Recruit and onboard Customer Success talent as the customer base and Aircraft Division continue to grow.
- Set team priorities and allocate resources based on customer risk, strategic importance, operational activity, and business needs.
- Establish measurable team and individual goals and conduct regular performance evaluations, coaching, and development discussions.
- Build a culture of urgency, accountability, professionalism, transparency, operational excellence, and customer advocacy. Build the Customer Success Operating Model
- Develop and operate a scalable Customer Success model that includes account segmentation, customer health scoring, success plans, engagement cadence, executive business reviews, and lifecycle governance.
- Ensure priority customers have documented success plans tied to mission outcomes, readiness objectives, adoption milestones, training requirements, sustainment needs, and executive stakeholder alignment.
- Establish standards for customer onboarding, operational transition, training coordination, sustainment handoffs, adoption management, and recurring mission-value reviews.
- Create repeatable processes, templates, playbooks, and governance mechanisms that allow the Customer Success organization to scale.
- Define clear ownership and operating rhythms across Customer Success, Deployment Operations, Flight Operations, Training, Sustainment, Program Management, Sales, Product, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, and Mission Operations.
- Partner with Aircraft Operations leadership to establish organizational priorities, resource requirements, operating plans, and functional performance goals. Lead the Critical Accounts Program
- Own and operate the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program for escalated, at-risk, high-priority, or strategically sensitive customers.
- Define Critical Accounts Program entry criteria, severity levels, account-health triggers, escalation paths, executive engagement requirements, and exit criteria.
- Lead cross-functional critical-account reviews with clear owners, recovery plans, decision logs, customer communication strategies, risk-reduction actions, and measurable closure criteria.
- Assign and hold internal owners accountable for recovery actions, commitments, and due dates.
- Ensure the appropriate technical, operational, sustainment, supply, quality, program, and executive resources are engaged based on the severity and mission impact of each account.
- Provide senior leadership with concise, action-oriented visibility into customer risk, mission impact, customer sentiment, commercial exposure, and recovery status.
- Personally support customer engagements involving significant operational risk, executive attention, or strategic importance.
- Conduct post-recovery reviews to ensure root causes are addressed and lessons learned are incorporated into products, processes, training, sustainment, and support. Advocate for Customer Mission Success
- Serve as a senior customer advocate for V-BAT and X-BAT customers and ensure Shield AI understands their missions, operating environments, readiness expectations, adoption barriers, and long-term objectives.
- Build trusted relationships with senior military, government, operational, and enterprise stakeholders.
- Translate customer feedback into clear product, support, training, documentation, sustainment, and operational requirements.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Training, Sustainment, and Business Development to resolve customer issues and implement permanent corrective actions.
- Ensure customer feedback, operational lessons, and recurring issues are incorporated into product and service improvement priorities.
- Support strategic customer engagements, demonstrations, exercises, operational deployments, executive briefings, and business reviews as needed.
- Identify risks and opportunities that could affect customer retention, mission success, future adoption, or account growth. Establish Metrics and Executive Visibility
- Own Customer Success dashboards, account-health assessments, risk registers, success plans, Critical Accounts Program reporting, and executive operating reviews.
- Define and track indicators including mission readiness, product adoption, training progress, fleet availability, support responsiveness, issue aging, customer sentiment, renewal or expansion risk, and executive engagement.
- Establish regular reporting cadences that clearly communicate customer outcomes, emerging risks, functional performance, resource constraints, and required leadership decisions.
- Use customer and operational data to identify trends, recurring problems, systemic risks, and opportunities to improve the customer experience.
- Measure the effectiveness of the Customer Success organization and continuously improve team processes, tools, and operating rhythms.
Required qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in customer success, customer operations, account management, program management, field operations, professional services, aviation operations, defense technology, aerospace, or mission-critical enterprise technology.
- 5+ years of experience leading customer-facing, account management, support, field operations, program management, or Customer Success teams.
- Demonstrated experience hiring, managing, coaching, and developing high-performing teams.
- Experience building or scaling a Customer Success, customer operations, account management, or similar customer-facing function.
- Demonstrated success managing escalated, at-risk, executive-level, or mission-critical customer accounts.
- Experience operating structured escalation, customer-health, critical-account, executive-governance, or customer-recovery processes.
- Strong executive presence and the ability to communicate effectively with senior military, government, enterprise, and internal executive stakeholders.
- Ability to establish strategy while remaining actively engaged in customer execution and issue resolution.
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity, urgency, conflict, and high operational stakes.
- Strong understanding of customer lifecycle management, adoption, operational readiness, sustainment, support, renewals, and expansion.
- Experience defining performance metrics, operating cadences, team objectives, and executive reporting.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive briefings, account plans, recovery plans, and leadership updates.
- Ability to travel up to 15% and work effectively with customers and teams in operational, field, and headquarters environments.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience in defense, aerospace, autonomous systems, aviation, unmanned aircraft systems, software-defined systems, military operations, or operational technology deployed in austere environments.
- Experience supporting the Department of Defense, U.S. military services, allied defense organizations, or government customers.
- Experience with vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft systems, aviation operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, mission systems, autonomy, deployed operations, aircraft sustainment, or mission-critical field operations.
- Prior military service or direct experience working with operational military units.
- Experience designing or operating Critical Accounts Programs, enterprise escalation frameworks, technical account management programs, Customer Success operations, or executive sponsor programs.
- Experience managing customer-facing organizations supporting both hardware and software products.
- Experience with Salesforce, Gainsight, Jira, Confluence, Tableau, Power BI, or similar customer success, support, and reporting systems.
- Active Secret or Top Secret security clearance.
Skills Required
- 10+ years of experience in customer success, customer operations, account management, program management, field operations, professional services, aviation operations, defense technology, aerospace, or mission-critical enterprise technology.
- 5+ years of experience leading customer-facing, account management, support, field operations, program management, or Customer Success teams.
- Demonstrated experience hiring, managing, coaching, and developing high-performing teams.
- Experience building or scaling a Customer Success, customer operations, account management, or similar customer-facing function.
- Demonstrated success managing escalated, at-risk, executive-level, or mission-critical customer accounts.
- Experience operating structured escalation, customer-health, critical-account, executive-governance, or customer-recovery processes.
- Strong executive presence and ability to communicate effectively with senior military, government, enterprise, and internal executive stakeholders.
- Ability to establish strategy while remaining actively engaged in customer execution and issue resolution.
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity, urgency, conflict, and high operational stakes.
- Strong understanding of customer lifecycle management, adoption, operational readiness, sustainment, support, renewals, and expansion.
- Experience defining performance metrics, operating cadences, team objectives, and executive reporting.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive briefings, account plans, recovery plans, and leadership updates.
- Ability to travel up to 15% and work effectively with customers and teams in operational, field, and headquarters environments.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Company materials describe excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage alongside a mental‑health EAP. Site perks such as an onsite gym in DC and a gym discount in San Diego support a health‑focused offering.
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Retirement Support — Careers materials highlight a 401(k) with company match as part of the standard package. A Total Rewards overview emphasizes retirement features within a broader, transparent compensation view.
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Career-Linked Recognition & Rewards — Compensation for in‑demand technical and senior go‑to‑market roles is described as competitive, with visible engineering ranges and top‑end packages. This points to meaningful upside tied to role, level, and scarce skills.
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.
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