Director, DoN Growth Campaign Leader (X-BAT Family of Systems) (R6365)

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Job Description:

The Director, DoN Growth Campaign Leader leads the internal operating rhythm that enables Shield AI’s UAS pursuits with the Department of the Navy, including the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps. Opportunity-focused Go-To-Market (GTM) leaders retain ownership of their customers, capture strategies, account plans, and individual pursuits. This role serves as the connective tissue across those leaders, integrating information across the DoN portfolio and providing the VP, Mission Solutions with a clear, decision-ready view of campaign health, priorities, dependencies, risks, mitigations, and resource requirements.

The Director connects DoN pursuits with relevant activity across other Services, allied and partner nations, product and engineering, U.S. Government approvals, aircraft availability, ship and at-sea test windows, airworthiness and shipboard-suitability sequencing, internal investment, and industrial strategy. The role identifies shared dependencies and resource conflicts early, helps sequence competing demands, and coordinates the cross-functional support required for GTM leads to execute their captures effectively.

The role maintains the authoritative DoN campaign picture and runs the operating cadence that turns portfolio insight into action. This includes campaign reviews, risk and dependency management, executive dashboards, action tracking, investment recommendations, and escalation of decisions requiring VP or executive attention. The Director ensures that information flows efficiently from the GTM organization to the VP, Mission Solutions and that leadership receives clear recommendations, tradeoffs, and required decisions.

GTM leads remain accountable for customer engagement, account planning, capture strategy, win strategy, price-to-win, proposal content, and pursuit outcomes. The Director enables their success by improving coordination, reducing friction around shared resources, and ensuring that the broader organization is aligned behind the highest-priority Department of the Navy opportunities.

Scope & authority:

This is a senior, high-visibility seat with authority, not a reporting function:

• Portfolio: Multiple concurrent Navy and Marine Corps pursuits across the X-BAT FoS, representing a multi-billion-dollar addressable opportunity.
• Team: Leadership by influence role, leveraging dedicated capture-operations and analyst support, with the expectation to build the team as the portfolio scales.
• Investment: Develops and co-stewards annual campaign and indirect investment against prioritized campaign returns.
• Governance: holds a standing seat in DoN bid/no-bid and investment-prioritization reviews, and sets the agenda for the executive campaign review.
• Growth path: a pipeline role toward senior Department of the Navy growth or general-management leadership at Shield AI.

What you'll do:

• Own the DoN view. Build and maintain the integrated DoN campaign picture across all X-BAT FoS DoN pursuits: strategy status, critical path, milestones, dependencies, decision points, and campaign health in one authoritative view.
• Enable GTM leads. Give each GTM lead the templates, playbooks, data, competitive inputs, cost and schedule inputs, and cross-functional access they need to build and execute their own capture plan. Success is measured by their outcomes, not by your visibility.
• Synchronize functions. Coordinate engineering, product, export, legal, contracts, finance, government relations, and business operations against a single prioritized campaign plan so GTM leads are not individually negotiating for the same scarce resources.
• Surface conflicts between campaigns. Identify where two or more campaigns compete for the same aircraft, test window, ship or range availability, engineering effort, approval bandwidth, or indirect dollar, and bring executive leadership a clear tradeoff and a recommendation.
• Drive executive decision quality. Run the operating cadence — campaign reviews, gate reviews, risk registers, action tracking, and executive dashboards — so leadership receives timely, accurate, decision-ready information on bid/no-bid, investment, and prioritization.
• Steward indirect investment. Work with Finance and Business Operations to track campaign investment, indirect spend, and resource planning against campaign priorities and expected return.
• Scale discipline. Capture what worked and what did not across captures, and convert it into repeatable tools, templates, metrics, and playbooks so each new campaign starts further ahead than the last.
• Support a culture of accountability, urgency, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Roll up your sleeves. Personally drive the execution of critical customer responses (RFI, RFP, CSO, and other solicitation vehicles) — assembling cross-functional inputs, holding the response schedule, and driving on-time submission, while the GTM lead retains ownership of win strategy, price-to-win, and proposal content.

Decision rights & interfaces:

• This role is accountable for: the integrated campaign plan and DoN view; the operating cadence and campaign-health reporting; identification and escalation of cross-campaign dependencies, conflicts, and risks; path-to-win roadmap; and recommendations on investment prioritization and sequencing.
• Opportunity GTM leads are accountable for: customer relationships and engagement, capture strategy, win strategy and price-to-win for their pursuit, proposal content, and the bid/no-bid recommendation for their opportunity.
• Government Relations, Export, Legal, and Contracts are accountable for: data-rights, political and legislative engagements and outcomes, disclosure determinations, legal positions, and contracting terms.
• Engineering and Product are accountable for: technical solution definition, configuration decisions, performance commitments, and coordination with relevant DoN technical authorities on airworthiness and shipboard-suitability requirements.
• Program Management is accountable for: execution of customer-funded programs after award.
• External customer engagement by this role is in support of, and at the invitation of, the responsible GTM lead.

Required qualifications:

• U.S. person as defined by ITAR (22 CFR 120.62), with the ability to obtain and maintain a DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and Special Access Program (SAP) eligibility.
• 12–20+ years in capture management, program management, strategic operations, business operations, technical program management, or a comparable cross-functional leadership role.
• Demonstrated success leading highly complex initiatives with multiple interdependent workstreams across engineering, business development, operations, finance, and executive leadership.
• Working knowledge of how Department of the Navy programs actually get funded and fielded — ASN(RD&A) and NAVAIR program-office dynamics (particularly PAE(A)) and the unmanned aviation portfolio), Navy and Marine Corps resource sponsorship and requirements staffing (N9/N98) and the Marine Corps aviation requirements process, the PPBE/POM cycle and Navy budget submission rhythm, and rapid-acquisition pathways such as OTAs, CSOs, Middle Tier of Acquisition, SBIR/STRATFI, DIU, ONR, and NavalX, including the transition from prototype to program of record.
• Proven ability to influence without direct authority and to drive accountability across functions and geographies.
• Strong executive communication: leadership briefings, dashboards, metrics, and decision-support materials that lead to decisions rather than discussion.
• Deep operational rigor in integrated schedules, critical path, milestones, action tracking, dependency management, and risk mitigation.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-changing environments with competing priorities across multiple time zones.
• Working understanding of the dependencies unique to naval aviation — NAVAIR airworthiness and flight-clearance processes, shipboard integration and suitability, environmental and marinization requirements, ship and at-sea test window availability, and DT/OT execution at Patuxent River and associated ranges.
• A service orientation toward the GTM leads this role supports, and the judgment to know when to escalate versus resolve quietly.

Preferred qualifications:

• Active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and current Special Access Program accesses.
• Experience supporting Department of Defense, aerospace, autonomy, robotics, aviation, or defense-technology organizations.
• Naval aviation background — U.S. Navy or Marine Corps operational, test, staff, or acquisition experience, or equivalent industry experience delivering aircraft to the Department of the Navy.
• Experience within business development, capture, proposal operations, strategic planning, or growth organizations running multiple concurrent U.S. Government pursuits.
• Familiarity with the export and international mechanisms that shape Department of the Navy pursuits — foreign disclosure determinations, FMS/DCS pathways, and security cooperation planning — where allied demand affects the Navy business case.
• Experience building executive dashboards, KPIs, operational scorecards, or portfolio health metrics.
• Experience supporting executive staff, chief-of-staff organizations, Strategy and Operations teams, or enterprise PMOs.
• Fluency with integrated schedule and work-management tooling (e.g., Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Jira), and an advanced degree or relevant certification (MBA, PMP, Lean Six Sigma) is a plus but not required.

Success in this role:

• GTM leads report that the role makes their campaign easier to run, not heavier to report on.
• DoN path-to-win is in place and running on a predictable, repeatable cadence that the whole organization can plan against.
• Cross-campaign resource and timing conflicts reach leadership as a decision with a recommendation, not as a surprise.
• Executive leadership can see, at any time, an accurate health picture of the DoN X-BAT FoS portfolio and make investment calls with confidence.
• Campaign mechanisms are reused across opportunities, and each new pursuit stands up measurably faster than the previous one.

How we work:

Shield AI’s core values — Do What Honor Dictates, Live as a Servant Leader, and Pursue Excellence — are how we hire, promote, and make hard calls. This role in particular demands servant leadership: success is measured by the outcomes of the GTM leads it supports.

Veterans and transitioning service members: we actively seek candidates with U.S. Navy or U.S. Marine Corps operational, staff, or acquisition experience, and we support military-to-civilian transitions.

Compensation and benefits: competitive base salary, meaningful equity in a growing defense-technology company, annual bonus, comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, 401(k), and relocation support where applicable. Final compensation depends on experience, clearance, and location.

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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.