Forward-Deployed UX Design Manager — Field-Driven AI

Air; Arlington, Pittsburgh, San Francisco (VA, Allegheny County, CA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Air, a leader in Enterprise Readiness, seeks a Manager of Forward Deployed UX Designers to lead a newly created team embedded with customers in the field. You will scope, design, and validate AI-native solutions across deployments—from depots to program offices—driving a 10x improvement in readiness and customer outcomes.

Based in the Arlington, VA area with travel up to 50% to customer sites, you will hire and mentor designers, define patterns for human–AI collaboration, and ensure the work

Qualifications

• 6+ years in product design and a track record of shaping product and business outcomes in complex enterprise/AI-native software.
• Experience leading or mentoring designers (as a manager or lead).
• Ability to think across products and workflows (service design, multi-product consistency).
• Experience co-creating with domain experts and stakeholders and turning work into a shipped product.
• Hands-on fluency with AI, including designing for agentic or model-driven products and understanding failure modes.
• Strong grounding in research and human–computer interaction (HCI).
• Experience building structure in high-growth environments without slowing the team.

Responsibilities

• Shape the product experience across deployments and connect it to how customers reach readiness and how Air wins and keeps accounts.
• Design the system, not just the screens; work with engineering and data partners to reveal real constraints and opportunities.
• Co-create with field teams to align priorities and turn mental models into a shared product picture.
• Grow the team by recruiting, mentoring, and developing forward-deployed UX designers; push toward AI-native ways of working.

Skills

Product design

Team leadership

Systems thinking

AI fluency

User research

HCI knowledge

Job description

Air, a leader in Enterprise Readiness, seeks a Manager of Forward Deployed UX Designers to lead a newly created team embedded with customers in the field. You will scope, design, and validate AI-native solutions across deployments—from depots to program offices—driving a 10x improvement in readiness and customer outcomes.

Based in the Arlington, VA area with travel up to 50% to customer sites, you will hire and mentor designers, define patterns for human–AI collaboration, and ensure the work