Manager of Autonomy Applications Engineering

Join Shield AI as the Manager of Autonomy Applications Engineering. In this highly technical, customer-facing leadership role, you will lead a team of Forward Deployed Engineers, ensuring excellent on-site customer support, deployment execution, and success in real-world environments. You will manage team performance, customer outcomes, and the flow of actionable field feedback back into the company. This position requires a strong technical background in software engineering, excellent communication skills, and a passion for autonomy and robotics.

Lead and manage a team of Forward Deployed Engineers to ensure successful customer deployments and technical support for the Hivemind SDK.

About Shield AI

Experience gathering field feedback, influencing product direction based on customer needs, and establishing repeatable customer success playbooks

Responsibilities

• Translate customer goals and program objectives into clear technical milestones and execution plans, driving accountability across the team.
• Collaborate with internal engineering, product, and program teams to improve customer readiness, product usability, and long-term customer success.
• You enjoy leading technical teams while staying close to customers and field execution

Requirements

• Ability to operate with a high degree of autonomy and accountability in ambiguous environments while leading a team through ambiguity
• You can translate ambiguous customer needs into structured technical plans, team priorities, and measurable outcomes
• Experience in a customer-facing technical leadership role such as forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, applications engineering, or customer engineering
• You are comfortable making decisions, removing blockers, and helping a team drive progress under pressure
• 2+ years of people management or formal technical leadership experience for engineers
• Excellent communication, presentation, interpersonal, coaching, and people leadership skills
• Strong technical background in software engineering, including the ability to review and debug complex systems and guide technical tradeoffs
• You enjoy working across engineering, product, and customer teams to improve both product outcomes and customer success
• Strong proficiency with modern C++ and experience with Python in a professional setting
• You are energized by coaching engineers through dynamic on-site challenges in real operational contexts
• 8+ years of relevant technical experience in software engineering, deployment engineering, solutions engineering, applications engineering, or forward deployed engineering
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with sound judgment under pressure
• You have strong engineering fundamentals and can build credibility quickly with technical stakeholders, customers, and direct reports
• You are passionate about or have great interest in autonomy, robotics, aerospace, defense technology, or deploying advanced software in the field
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field
• 3+ years of experience working in a startup environment
• Experience managing or leading teams in the defense, robotics, aerospace, or autonomous systems industry
• Experience building or scaling a forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, applications engineering, or customer engineering function