Founded in 2015, 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 and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft. 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:
This Director owns the full demand-to-value pipeline: sensing where the business needs help, separating signal from noise, identifying the highest-leverage opportunities, deciding when to buy versus build, driving adoption, and proving measurable ROI.
This role is the AI team's primary operator with non-engineering functions across Shield, and is expected to build and lead the team that executes this pipeline at scale. Success is defined by turning scattered interest into a focused portfolio of business-backed use cases, converting pilots into real adoption, and demonstrating hard value in ways that earn trust, budget, and follow-on demand.
While this role is business-facing rather than a technical builder, it requires genuine technical grounding in machine learning and generative AI. Sound buy/build calls, credible use-case shaping, and defensible ROI cases all depend on the leader understanding what these systems can and can't do, how they're evaluated, and where the real technical risk sits — not just what vendors claim.
What you'll do:
What success looks like:
Required qualifications:
- 15+ years in business transformation, product, strategy, operations, enterprise technology, or related leadership roles.
- 5+ years leading cross-functional programs or transformations that required influencing senior stakeholders and driving behavior change, including direct people-management experience.
- Substantive technical fluency in modern AI and generative AI — including how models are trained, tuned, and evaluated, and where their practical limitations sit — sufficient to assess vendor claims critically, shape technically realistic use cases, and hold a credible technical conversation with engineering counterparts. This is a genuine requirement, not surface familiarity, even though the role is not a hands-on technical builder.
- Demonstrated ability to distinguish generative AI from traditional ML in terms of technical risk, skill requirements, cost, and timeline, and to apply that distinction to prioritization and staffing decisions.
- Proven track record translating business needs into deployed technology solutions with measurable business impact.
- Strong judgment on build versus buy decisions, including vendor evaluation, external market scanning, and procurement partnership.
- Experience defining baselines, KPIs, and ROI frameworks for new tools, workflows, or transformation efforts.
- Exceptional executive communication skills, especially with non-technical leaders and sponsors.
- Proven track record building, leading, and developing high-performing teams, including hiring and mentoring talent.
- Strong operator instincts: comfortable with ambiguity, able to create structure where little exists, and willing to own outcomes rather than hand off work.
Preferred qualifications:
#LF
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.
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.