Head of Product Design

SHIELD AI is building Hivemind, an autonomy development platform, and the Head of Product Design will define the product’s user experience vision while leading design execution across the full autonomy lifecycle. This is a hands-on design leadership role focused on AI-native, agent-driven workflows, paired with the ability to mentor a small team of designers.

Role focus

You will set the direction for how highly technical users interact with complex autonomy development workflows, from simulation and testing through deployment and operations. The work includes designing end-to-end experiences for autonomy engineers, software developers, operators, and mission planners, simplifying architecture and data flows into intuitive interfaces.

Responsibilities

• Lead customer research across product development, customer engagement, and solutions teams to identify pain points, workflows, unmet needs, and product opportunities.
• Establish scalable mechanisms to gather, synthesize, and communicate user insights across the product development lifecycle.
• Translate customer and operational feedback into actionable product recommendations, requirements, and design initiatives.
• 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 end-to-end product experience across training, documentation, tutorials, and overall workflows to help users get the most from the product.
• 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 narratives, prototypes, and visual storytelling.
• Advocate for user-centered decision making in a highly technical, engineering-driven environment.
• 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 design’s role in delivering successful products.
• 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 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.
• In the first 6–12 months, spend most of the time on user research, experience design, prototyping concepts, facilitating product discovery, and partnering directly with Product and Engineering teams to define the future of autonomy development.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in Product Design, UX Design, Human Factors, or a related field.
• Proven track record designing and shipping complex technical products, developer tools, platforms, infrastructure software, data-dense applications, or enterprise systems.
• Deep technical fluency and ability to collaborate with senior engineering leaders on architecture, technical constraints, and software development workflows.
• Strong experience conducting user research and translating insights into product strategy and design solutions.
• Proven ability to influence product direction and organizational decisions without direct authority.
• Strong understanding of AI-powered product experiences, including conversational interfaces, human-in-the-loop workflows, AI-assisted decision making, and agent-based systems.
• Experience defining new user experiences in ambiguous technology spaces where industry standards and workflows are still emerging.
• Experience building and retaining high-performing design teams.
• Strong portfolio demonstrating both strategic thinking and hands-on design execution.

Preferred qualifications

• Background designing developer platforms, SDKs, cloud infrastructure products, DevOps tooling, or engineering productivity tools.
• Direct work on AI/ML platforms, MLOps workflows, foundation-model-enabled products, copilots, or agentic systems.
• Familiarity with autonomy, robotics, simulation, digital twins, mission systems, physical AI, or related development workflows including testing, evaluation, deployment, and operations.
• Portfolio examples involving command-and-control systems, mission-planning interfaces, operational dashboards, or real-time decision-support tools.
• Ability to design across integrated hardware/software systems.
• Domain exposure to defense technology, aerospace, robotics, or other regulated, mission-critical, or high-consequence operational environments.

Compensation and package

• Salary: USD 230,000 - 420,000 per year
• Benefits: Pay within range plus Bonus + Benefits + Equity

Full-time regular employee offer package: Pay within range listed plus Bonus + Benefits + Equity. Temporary employee offer package: Pay within range listed above plus a temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment).

All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits.

SHIELD AI may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications and analyzing information. These tools assist the recruitment team but do not replace human judgment, and final hiring decisions are made by humans.

Location: San Diego, CA (onsite).