Forward Deployed Product Manager (Public Sector)

Scale AI; Ashington; On-site; GBP 113,000 - 158,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health & Wellbeing

Personal & Career Growth

Building Scale Community

Parental Support

Job summary

Scale AI is seeking a Product Manager for the Public Sector to lead military planning and real-time AI/Alerting within constrained environments. You will own a cross-cutting portfolio, translate operational realities into actionable input for engineers, and manage senior DoD and civilian stakeholders while driving production deployments.

The role emphasizes deep domain fluency, production-ready delivery, and the ability to balance competing priorities in a high-stakes setting with TS/SCI

Qualifications

• 6+ years in product management, technical program management, or customer-facing product ownership.
• Experience shipping AI or data products into large, security-constrained organizations.
• Ability to translate customer reality into product direction with credible judgment.

Responsibilities

• Own product outcomes for military planning and LUX across DoW and National Security accounts.
• Translate operational reality into high-signal input for engineering and platform teams.
• Build trusted advisory relationships with senior military leaders and stakeholders.
• Drive deployments into production in classified and constrained environments.
• Shape cross-cutting solutions spanning multiple stakeholders and use cases.

Skills

Product strategy

Cross-functional leadership

Stakeholder management

Military/DoD domain knowledge

Real-time data products

Portfolio ownership

Communication

Travel readiness

System thinking

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field

Tools

Kafka

Flink

Kinesis

AFSIM

Job description

• Scale is accelerating the development of AI across the world’s most important organizations, including the U.S. Department of War (DoW), its constituent services, and the broader U.S. National Security industry
• The Product Manager, Public Sector will lead Scale’s product efforts across two connected focus areas - military planning and real-time AI and Alerting (LUX) - shaping real production outcomes and translating messy operational reality into high-signal input for the core platform
• This is not a roadmap PM, a CSM, or a solutions engineer
• This PM owns product outcomes for a cross-cutting portfolio of AI and data capabilities: earning deep trust with senior military, civilian, and mission stakeholders, driving deployments to production inside classified and operationally constrained environments, identifying where the product is the bottleneck vs. execution, and feeding durable, specific signal back to Scale’s platform team
• The best candidates have shipped AI or real-time data products into defense or other large, security-constrained organizations and can tell the difference between a customer’s stated request, their actual problem, and what the platform should do
• Own product outcomes across Scale’s military planning portfolio and/or its highest-impact national security accounts for LUX, spanning multiple DoW and National Security stakeholders and use cases. You are the accountable PM for product delivery and customer value
• Translate operational reality into high-signal product input for engineering and platform teams - specific, evidence-backed product perspective with tradeoffs articulated, not requirements docs. This includes military planning workflows (e.g., the Joint Planning Process) and modeling/simulation requirements (e.g., AFSIM), as well as real customer workflows, latency/throughput constraints, and mission priorities for LUX
• Build trusted advisory relationships with senior military leaders (flag/general officer and senior civilian equivalents), National Security customer stakeholders, and senior technical leads. Become the reliable escalation point on the Scale side before issues surface externally
• Drive deployments from contract to production inside classified and operationally constrained environments - whether that means military planning workflows or LUX’s low-latency, high-throughput, mission-critical data systems. You know what "production-ready" means inside DoW, and you close the gap
• Distinguish where the product is the constraint from where execution, integration, policy, or change management is the constraint. Drive each type of blocker to resolution through the right channel
• Shape a cross-cutting set of solutions spanning multiple stakeholders, echelons, and use cases, rather than owning a single point deployment
• Partner closely with Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) teams and Platform Capability teams so the account runs as a coordinated team, not a set of parallel workstreams
• Identify and develop expansion opportunities grounded in demonstrated customer value
• Represent customer reality to the platform and leadership with enough credibility that it changes decisions
• Balance competing requirements across CCMDs and service components that must collaborate despite differing needs - distinct from building for a single customer
• Travel as required to customer sites, including classified facilities

Benefits

• Health & Wellbeing: Our holistic approach to supporting Scaliens includes comprehensive health coverage, dental and vision insurance, mental healthcare services, and more. PTO policies and accommodating schedules ensure you’ll get time off when you need it to relax and recharge. Note that our offerings may vary by region as we strive to respond to the unique needs of Scaliens around the globe.
• Personal & Career Growth: Continuously learn and grow through annual learning & development stipend, attending leadership breakfasts, manager training, speaker series, and joining an ERG.
• Building Scale Community: We welcome guests to our offices, and you can expect to see Scalien families and friends around. Join local happy hours, and accept invites to game nights, book clubs, and many other employee-led community events.
• Parental Support: Balancing work and family is essential, and Scale understands the importance of having adequate leave policies in place to promote a healthy home and work life.

Comfortable operating with senior military/civilian/mission stakeholders and senior engineers simultaneously; credible presence in high-stakes rooms on both sidesExtreme ownership and follow-through: closes loops without reminders, drives outcomes across teams without formal authority, holds self and others to commitmentsActive TOP SECRET security clearance (TS/SCI eligibility preferred)The military planning process (e.g., the Joint Planning Process) and modeling/simulation systems (e.g., AFSIM)Technical translation: bridges the gap between customer engineering/planning teams and Scale platform engineers; adds interpretation rather than simply relaying messagesDomain fluency: working knowledge of the military planning process and modeling/simulation tools (e.g., Joint Planning Process, AFSIM), and/or the tradeoffs inherent to real-time, event-driven, high-throughput data architectures and their implications for AI agents - and how each shapes product decisionsReal-time streaming data systems - event-driven architectures, low-latency pipelines, and high-throughput data processing - and how they behave in productionEnterprise deployment ownership: has driven AI/ML or complex/real-time software products from contract to production at scale - including near-zero-to-one, with no real users yet - with real integration, real security constraints, and real change managementProduct judgment in the field: translates customer reality into product direction, not just feature requests; can say no credibly and explain whyAbility to shape a cross-cutting set of solutions across multiple stakeholders and use cases, rather than customer-specific solutionsClear, precise communication: adjusts for audience (senior leader vs. engineer vs. PM); writes and speaks at the right level of detail; does not over- or under-explainAbility to travel, including to classified facilitiesDirect experience working with the U.S. Department of War (DoW) or the broader U.S. national security communityDemonstrated record of shipping AI or data products into large, constrained, classified, or highly regulated organizations - not pilots or proofs-of-concept. You can name the customer, the scale, the integration, and what production actually looked likeStrong judgment under pressure: makes good calls quickly with incomplete information, knows when to elevate vs. resolve, does not generate thrash6+ years in product management, technical program management, or a customer-facing product ownership role, including experience operating at an L6 (senior/staff) level of scope and autonomyTechnical fluency sufficient to hold a real conversation with a platform engineer about architectural tradeoffs - not deep coding, but genuine comprehension of how systems work in productionOperating in ambiguity and constrained environments: creates structure where there is none; makes decisions with incomplete information inside classified settings; does not wait for fully defined requirementsWorking knowledge of at least one of the following, with an ability to speak credibly to the other:Customer trust-building: earns and maintains trust with demanding senior military, civilian, and mission stakeholders over multi-quarter engagements; manages conflict without eroding the relationshipDirect experience with AI/ML platform products - agentic capabilities, human-agent interaction, large-scale data, some T&E; or data labeling, RLHF, fine-tuning workflows, and model evaluation pipelinesExperience in a startup or early-stage environment where process didn’t exist and had to be createdHands-on familiarity with streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Flink, Kinesis) or the operational systems that consume themPrior forward-deployed or embedded role (consulting, field PM, solutions engineering with ownership)Prior military service or DoD/DoW civilian experience in an operations, planning, or acquisitions role