Senior Staff Designer; R4320

Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed deep-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include the V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, Hivemind Enterprise, and the Hivemind Vision product lines. With nine offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below).

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Job Description:

The Staff/Sr. Staff Product Designer role within Shield AI’s Hivemind organization is responsible for solving complex User Experience and Product Design problems associated with the end-to-end user experience of developing, deploying, testing and evaluating autonomy solutions. The core products developed by the Hivemind organization target multiple user personae, ranging from the external end-user (the “Operator” of autonomous systems), to the Test engineer (who tests and evaluates autonomous systems in software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop and real-world flight test environments), to the AI engineer (who develops and tests autonomy architectures).

Significant portions of the product are best described as developer facing software product (i.e. SDKs, CLIs) and require contribution from designers that have relevant experience. Other portions of the product leverage web technologies and UIs to support configuration management, scenario design, mission planning, mission rehearsal, debrief, and test and evaluation process. The supported workflows with these products range from the highly visual/experiential experience of the operator using a ground-control-station (GCS) client to mission plan and command-and-control, to autonomy engineers working within the Integrated Development Environment, to Test Engineers using the web portal and extensible CLI tool.

As such, Hivemind is a highly complex and technical product that enables complex workflows across multiple collaborating teams.

• Lead end-to-end design for high-impact product areas, from strategy and concept to final implementation.
• Drive and uphold design quality through strong ideation, systems thinking, and refinement of shared design standards.
• Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and Customer Experience to define product direction and user needs.
• Facilitate design strategy workshops and collaboration to drive alignment and momentum.
• Influence cross-functional planning, roadmap prioritization, and long-term product vision through design shaping rituals.
• Advocate for the user experience in company-wide discussions; help shape how product success is defined.
• Mentor other designers through feedback, partnering and thought leadership.
• Lead design reviews to collect feedback from engineering, product and customer surrogates, and align features and capabilities

• Master’s in design, HCI, or demonstrated work experience at a comparable level of expertise.
• 8+ years of professional experience in product/UX design with a track record of shipped, user-facing products.
• A portfolio demonstrating exceptional interaction design.
• Expertise with modern design tools (Figma, Proto Pie, etc.) and workflows (design systems, component libraries).
• Experience leading product initiatives end-to-end - from exploration to final implementation.
• Strong systems thinking and the ability to scale and improve design frameworks.
• Excellent communication skills, able to clearly present design rationale to non-design stakeholders.

• Prior experience in a Principal or Staff-level design role at a product-led company.
• Background in designing enterprise software, platforms.
• Experience designing developer-facing software tools.
• Familiarity with geospatial interfaces and complex data visualization or analysis workflows.
• Experience contributing to design systems and iterating with prototypes, A/B testing, or data-informed workflows.
• Passion for mentoring others and cultivating design team culture and process.
• Experience with automation, autonomy, self-driving, robotics, aerospace, aviation

Full-time…