Assistant Product Owner - CCA Mission Autonomy (Platform Integration)

About the role

Shield AI is hiring an Assistant Product Owner (APO) for its CCA Mission Autonomy program for the U.S. Air Force, supporting the delivery of mission autonomy as a standalone capability. The APO will own the day-to-day backlog of the Platform Integration and Support shoal (Shoal 1) in Jira and Confluence, working with the Shoal Lead, Systems Engineering Lead and four Feature Crew Leads, and reporting to the Product Owner/Manager.

Key responsibilities

• Work with the Product Owner and Chief Engineer to define customer needs and priorities, separating must-have capability from deferrable scope
• Elicit and validate needs from customers, official guidance and subject-matter experts, and turn them into user stories and epic descriptions with value, success and acceptance criteria, effort, timeline, dependencies and risks
• Manage the Shoal 1 epic backlog, keeping it traceable to customer requirements and surfacing priority or scope changes
• Take part in sprint planning and reviews, and provide a product perspective on epics, interfaces, dependencies and milestones
• Manage dependencies across shoals and carry integration decisions to the relevant teams
• Support the operator interface (HMI) backlog, and keep protected weekly hands-on time to write HMI epics from first-hand use
• Support the platform integration crew with vendors, act as a translator across disciplines, and support other shoals such as Systems Engineering and Test & Evaluation

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, aerospace engineering, cognitive systems engineering, human factors or a related field, or equivalent military or operational experience
• 3+ years in product ownership or a related field
• U.S. person as defined under ITAR; active DoD Secret clearance at hire, eligible for Top Secret, SCI and/or SAP clearance
• Ability to travel domestically about 15-25%

Required skills

• Jira and Confluence, including epics, user stories and acceptance criteria in an agile environment
• Integrated view of a complex product across distributed documentation and engineering disciplines
• Technical fluency in mission autonomy, autonomous systems, flight software, ground control systems or HMIs, or avionics interfaces
• Willingness to install, configure and run mission scenarios in the operator interface

Preferred: experience with Air Force, Navy or joint aviation programs, A-GRA/A-GRI/UCI, airworthiness and functional safety, OITL evaluations, C2/HMI products, systems modeling tools (e.g. Cameo), and an advanced degree.