Head of Product Design - Autonomy Platform

About the role

Shield AI, a venture-backed defense-tech company, is looking for a Head of Product Design to define and lead the user experience vision for Hivemind, its autonomy development platform. The role turns complex autonomy, robotics, AI and developer workflows into intuitive experiences for engineers, operators and organizations, and focuses on shaping AI-native, agent-driven workflows across the autonomy lifecycle. It is a highly hands-on leadership position managing a small team of designers.

Key responsibilities

• Lead customer research across product development, customer engagement and solutions teams, and set up scalable ways to gather and share user insights
• Design end-to-end workflows for autonomy development, simulation, testing, analysis, deployment and operations, simplifying complex systems for technical users
• Own the full product experience, including training, documentation and tutorials
• Partner with Product Managers on vision, roadmap and go-to-market strategy, and align Product, Engineering, Design and executive leadership
• Build design standards, design systems and UX principles, mentor a small team of designers and grow the design function
• Shape the user experience of AI-assisted workflows, including human-AI collaboration, agent orchestration and explainability frameworks

Required profile

• 10+ years in Product Design, UX Design, Human Factors or related fields
• Track record shipping complex technical products, developer tools, platforms or enterprise systems
• Deep technical fluency and ability to collaborate with senior engineering leaders
• Proven ability to influence product direction without direct authority
• Experience building and retaining high-performing design teams
• Strong portfolio showing both strategy and hands-on design

Preferred qualifications

• Background in developer platforms, SDKs, cloud infrastructure, DevOps tooling or engineering productivity tools
• Direct work on AI/ML platforms, MLOps, foundation-model products, copilots or agentic systems
• Familiarity with autonomy, robotics, simulation, digital twins or mission systems
• Experience with command-and-control, mission-planning or operational dashboard interfaces
• Ability to design across integrated hardware/software systems
• Exposure to defense technology, aerospace or other regulated, mission-critical environments