Lead Product Manager - Airborne Systems

Overview

Hermeus is a high-speed aircraft manufacturer focused on the rapid design, build, and test of high-Mach and hypersonic aircraft for the national interest. Working directly with the Department of Defense, Hermeus delivers capabilities that will ensure that our nation, and our allies, maintain an asymmetric advantage over any and all potential adversaries.

The Lead Product Manager - Airborne Systems is responsible for defining, prioritizing, and coordinating airborne mission capabilities across Hermeus aircraft programs. This role sits above individual domain Product Managers and ensures that autonomy, mission systems, payloads, ground segment, data/debrief, and simulation capabilities are aligned into coherent product increments tied to operational needs, flight events, and customer objectives.

This position owns airborne product intent, capability structure, and prioritization, ensuring that the right problems are being solved in the right order. The role partners closely with Engineering, Test, and Flight Operations to support execution and ensure integrated capabilities are demonstrable, testable, and aligned with program milestones.

This is the role that ensures airborne product vision and operational outcomes remain aligned as systems are built, integrated, and flown.

• End-to-end airborne mission capability definition and prioritization: Own the definition, sequencing, and prioritization of the airborne mission capability roadmap aligned to CONOPs, customer intent, and program objectives, translating operational needs into clearly defined capability increments with measurable acceptance criteria across mission-enabling subsystems.
• Cross-domain product alignment: Align and coordinate Product Managers across Autonomy, Ground Segment, Interfaces & Configuration, and Mission Systems & Payloads to ensure capability plans converge into integrated airborne mission increments while identifying, resolving, and driving alignment on cross-domain dependencies, gaps, and conflicts.
• Integration intent and capability structure: Define integration intent, key interfaces of interest, and cross-system workflows for each capability increment, maintaining the airborne capability structure used for planning, execution, readiness discussions, and consistent product intent across mission phases and operational use cases.
• Acceptance criteria and definition of done: Define and maintain Definition of Ready and Definition of Done for airborne mission capabilities, ensuring acceptance criteria are measurable, testable, operationally tied, and evaluable through partnership with test and flight teams using available evidence.
• Digital thread ownership and product artifacts: Own the airborne product structure and digital-thread expectations spanning requirements through release packages, governing the single source of truth for capability maps, increment definitions, product backlogs, prioritization decisions, software and service baselines, and Mission Data Load (MDL) requirements and versioning intent.
• Release planning and readiness support: Define and execute product release planning aligned to flight events, demonstrations, and customer milestones, lead readiness discussions for SRR, SFR, PDR, CDR, TRR, FCA, and PCA, and track cross-domain risks and readiness blockers through mitigation with accountable owners.
• Customer and stakeholder engagement: Serve as the primary product interface for airborne mission capability with internal leadership and external stakeholders, supporting customer engagements through roadmap and capability presentations and ensuring customer feedback is reflected in roadmap and prioritization updates.
• Leadership and communication: Lead regular cross-domain product integration and planning forums, clearly communicate status, risks, and priorities to leadership, and mentor Product Managers while reinforcing outcome-driven, execution-focused product discipline.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 8+ years of experience delivering complex aerospace, mission systems, or autonomous…