Principal Product Designer (R3167)
Shield AI
Product, Design
San Diego, CA, USA · San Diego, CA, USA · Oregon, USA
Posted on Feb 1, 2025
Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent, autonomous systems. Its products include Hivemind Enterprise—EdgeOS, Pilot, Commander, and Forge—as well as V-BAT and Sentient Vision Systems (wide-area motion imaging software). With offices in San Diego, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Abu Dhabi (UAE), Kyiv (Ukraine), and Melbourne (Australia), Shield AI’s technology actively supports U.S. and allied operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X and Instagram.
The Staff/Sr. Staff Product Designer role within Shield AI’s Hivemind organization is responsible for solving complex User Experience and Product Design problems associated with the end-to-end user experience of developing, deploying, testing and evaluating autonomy solutions. The core products developed by the Hivemind organization target multiple user personae, ranging from the external end-user (the “Operator” of autonomous systems), to the Test engineer (who tests and evaluates autonomous systems in software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop and real-world flight test environments), to the AI engineer (who develops and tests autonomy architectures). Significant portions of the product are are best described as developer facing software product (i.e. SDKs, CLIs) and require contribution from designers that have relevant experience. Other portions of the product leverage web technologies and UIs to support configuration management, scenario design, mission planning, mission rehearsal, debrief, and test and evaluation process. The supported workflows with these products range from the highly visual/experiential experience of the operator using a ground-control-station (GCS) client to mission plan and command-and-control, to autonomy engineers working within the Integrated Development Environment, to Test Engineers using the web portal and extensible CLI tool. As such, Hivemind is a highly complex and technical product that enables complex workflows across multiple collaborating teams.
What You'll Do:
- Work closely with members of the Office of the CTO to crystallize the vision of the Hivemind product and its documentation
- Lead the user experience design of the Hivemind web portal
- Lead the user experience design of the expansive and interactive documentation system for the Hivemind product
- Work closely with the technical leads of Hivemind Commander (mission planning, command and control, air-ground communications) and Hivemind Design (configurations, test and evaluation, rehearsal, analysis) to enhance the user experience of their products
- Conduct user research to understand user personae and their needs
- Investigate competing products and their user experiences, synthesize findings to present to engineering and product leadership
Required Qualifications:
- Masters degree or equivalent in design, interaction design, human-computer-interaction, or similar
- 8+ years of experience as a product and/or user experience designer
- Experience with highly complex software products
- Experience with product and user experience design of software products delivered with React / web-stack
- Comfortable working within a Linux environment, experience with the Linux terminal
- Thrives in a high-velocity product development environment
- Is comfortable with ambiguity and is able to produce results with high-level guidance
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with user experience design of autonomous systems
- Experience with user experience design video games
- Experience designing for “Low Code” or “No Code” systems
- Experience and/or comfort reading C++ and/or Python and/or Typescript
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Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.