Head Of Product Design
US$230,000 – US$420,000 / yr base salary
Posted 26 Sep 2026
Advertised as “Head of Product Design (R5776)”
BranchFactor Summary
The original posting with the fluff stripped out
- Expected experience
- 10+ yrs
- Management level
- People management
- Employment
- On-Site
- Contract
- Full-time
| Base salary | US$230,000 – US$420,000 / yr |
|---|
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 Head of Product Design will define and lead the user experience vision for Hivemind, Shield AI’s autonomy development platform. This role is responsible for transforming complex autonomy, robotics, AI, and developer workflows into intuitive experiences that enable engineers, operators, and organizations to develop and deploy resilient autonomy at scale.
A major focus of this role will be shaping the next generation of AI-native and agent-driven workflows across the autonomy lifecycle. As Hivemind evolves from traditional software tooling toward AI-assisted autonomy development, simulation, evaluation, deployment, and operations, this leader will help invent entirely new ways for users to collaborate with AI systems, agents, and foundation-model-powered tools. The ideal candidate has deep experience designing AI products, developer platforms, or complex technical systems and can translate emerging AI capabilities into workflows that dramatically improve user productivity and outcomes.
This is a highly hands-on role as this leader will manage a team of elite designers. During the first 6–12 months, most of the time will be spent conducting user research, designing experiences, prototyping concepts, facilitating product discovery, and partnering directly with Product and Engineering teams to define the future of autonomy development.
What you'll do:
User Research & Product Discovery
- Lead customer research efforts across product development, customer engagement, and solutions teams to identify pain points, workflows, unmet needs, and product opportunities.
- Establish scalable mechanisms for gathering, synthesizing, and communicating user insights throughout the product development lifecycle.
- Translate customer and operational feedback into actionable product recommendations, requirements, and design initiatives.