The Sustainment Project Manager is a senior individual contributor responsible for driving execution discipline across V-BAT sustainment activities. This role owns the operating rhythm, escalation mechanisms, and cross-functional execution framework required to move technical escalations, corrective actions, configuration actions, obsolescence actions, service actions, and customer-impacting sustainment priorities to closure.
This role partners closely with Fleet Support, Sustainment Engineering, Product Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Customer Success, and Operations to ensure sustainment actions are prioritized, resourced, tracked, and completed on timelines that support fleet readiness, customer commitments, and long-term product supportability.
The Sustainment Project Manager does not simply track work. This role drives accountability across functions, identifies blockers early, escalates risks before they impact the fleet or customer, and ensures leadership has clear visibility into sustainment health, open risks, aging issues, and priority actions.
What you'll do:
- Own and maintain the V-BAT sustainment action tracker, ensuring actions, owners, due dates, blockers, decisions, and status are accurate and current.
- Drive the weekly sustainment review rhythm, including agenda management, action follow-up, decision tracking, and escalation preparation.
- Lead sustainment escalation reviews for aging, blocked, customer-impacting, or fleet-readiness-impacting issues.
- Coordinate across Fleet Support, Sustainment Engineering, Product Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Customer Success, and Operations to align ownership, priority, and execution path.
- Maintain clear visibility into top customer-impacting and fleet-impacting sustainment issues.
- Drive progress on corrective actions, obsolescence actions, configuration changes, maintenance releases, service actions, and field support actions.
- Ensure major sustainment actions have assigned owners, committed dates, defined next steps, and clear closure criteria.
- Identify risks, blockers, dependencies, and resource constraints that may delay sustainment execution or impact customer support.
- Escalate blocked or aging actions with clear recommendations, decision needs, and impact statements.
- Support maintenance release coordination, release readiness reviews, and field rollout planning.
- Partner with technical teams to ensure configuration changes, service actions, and corrective actions are coordinated with appropriate stakeholders before field execution.
- Prepare leadership updates on sustainment status, priority risks, customer impacts, aging actions, and execution health.
- Translate complex technical and operational issues into clear action plans, decision points, and executive-level summaries.
- Improve sustainment operating mechanisms, trackers, review formats, escalation paths, and reporting structure as the sustainment function scales.
- Drive accountability without direct authority by aligning stakeholders around priorities, timelines, and customer or fleet impact.
Required qualifications:
- 6+ years of experience in technical project management, technical program management, engineering operations, sustainment, aviation operations, manufacturing operations, product support, or complex hardware execution.
- Demonstrated experience driving cross-functional technical work across engineering, quality, manufacturing, supply chain, operations, customer support, or field support teams.
- Experience managing or coordinating corrective actions, configuration changes, obsolescence actions, service actions, production issues, field issues, or fleet-impacting sustainment actions.
- Strong technical fluency with hardware products, engineering change processes, configuration management, root cause/corrective action processes, manufacturing processes, aviation maintenance, or fielded system support.
- Proven ability to build and manage action trackers, escalation mechanisms, risk registers, dependency maps, decision logs, and leadership reporting.
- Strong ability to identify blockers, drive accountability, escalate risks, and maintain execution cadence without direct authority over functional teams.
- Experience supporting customer-impacting technical issues in a high-reliability hardware, aerospace, defense, robotics, aviation, manufacturing, or similarly complex operational environment.
- Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including engineers, operators, support teams, manufacturing teams, quality teams, and senior leaders.
- Strong written communication skills, including the ability to convert technical details into concise status updates, risk summaries, decision requests, and executive briefings.
- Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and impose structure where processes are immature, evolving, or cross-functionally complex.
- Strong judgment in prioritizing issues based on customer impact, fleet readiness, operational risk, technical severity, and execution urgency.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with UAS, aviation sustainment, aerospace manufacturing, defense programs, fielded hardware systems, or deployed technical products.
- Familiarity with MRB, FRACAS, RCCA, ECO/ECR processes, configuration management, fleet readiness, service bulletins, maintenance releases, or field retrofit execution.
- Experience working with deployed systems, field operations, customer support teams, military customers, or defense end users.
- Experience supporting sustainment, reliability, maintainability, or lifecycle support for complex electromechanical systems.
- Experience working in a startup, high-growth, defense technology, aerospace, or advanced manufacturing environment.
- PMP, Lean Six Sigma, APICS, aviation maintenance, engineering operations, or related certification preferred but not required.
Skills Required
- 6+ years of experience in technical project management, technical program management, engineering operations, sustainment, aviation operations, manufacturing operations, product support, or complex hardware execution
- Demonstrated experience driving cross-functional technical work across engineering, quality, manufacturing, supply chain, operations, customer support, or field support teams
- Experience managing or coordinating corrective actions, configuration changes, obsolescence actions, service actions, production issues, field issues, or fleet-impacting sustainment actions
- Strong technical fluency with hardware products, engineering change processes, configuration management, root cause/corrective action processes, manufacturing processes, aviation maintenance, or fielded system support
- Proven ability to build and manage action trackers, escalation mechanisms, risk registers, dependency maps, decision logs, and leadership reporting
- Strong ability to identify blockers, drive accountability, escalate risks, and maintain execution cadence without direct authority over functional teams
- Experience supporting customer-impacting technical issues in a high-reliability hardware, aerospace, defense, robotics, aviation, manufacturing, or similarly complex operational environment
- Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, including engineers, operators, support teams, manufacturing teams, quality teams, and senior leaders
- Strong written communication skills, including ability to convert technical details into concise status updates, risk summaries, decision requests, and executive briefings
- Ability to operate independently in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and impose structure where processes are immature, evolving, or cross-functionally complex
- Strong judgment in prioritizing issues based on customer impact, fleet readiness, operational risk, technical severity, and execution urgency
- Experience with UAS, aviation sustainment, aerospace manufacturing, defense programs, fielded hardware systems, or deployed technical products
- Familiarity with MRB, FRACAS, RCCA, ECO/ECR processes, configuration management, fleet readiness, service bulletins, maintenance releases, or field retrofit execution
- Experience working with deployed systems, field operations, customer support teams, military customers, or defense end users
- Experience supporting sustainment, reliability, maintainability, or lifecycle support for complex electromechanical systems
- Experience working in a startup, high-growth, defense technology, aerospace, or advanced manufacturing environment
- PMP, Lean Six Sigma, APICS, aviation maintenance, engineering operations, or related certification
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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Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
