Staff Technical Program Manager, V-BAT

Shield; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking a staff technical program manager in Dallas to own execution across UAS, autonomy, mission systems, and customer delivery. The role connects requirements, interfaces, verification, technical baselines, and delivery cadence with productized aircraft capabilities.

You will lead cross-functional teams, manage integrated plans, and build dashboards to track readiness, risks, and release performance, collaborating with engineering, manufacturing, flight operations, and

Qualifications

• Senior technical program, systems engineering, aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomy, or UAS experience.
• Experience leading cross-functional programs that deliver integrated products or customer capabilities.
• Ability to communicate technical status, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions to engineering leaders and executives.

Responsibilities

• Lead execution for complex UAS, autonomy, mission-system, and customer-delivery programs.
• Own integrated plans, milestones, critical paths, dependencies, risks, decisions, and change control.
• Coordinate system integration and test across hardware, software, autonomy, systems engineering, manufacturing, flight operations, cybersecurity, and field teams.
• Build program metrics and dashboards for integration readiness, release performance, risk posture, and requirements verification.

Skills

Senior TPM experience

Systems engineering

Aerospace/defense

Cross-functional leadership

UAS/autonomy experience

Executive-level communication

DoD clearance eligibility

Job description

What the role actually is

Shield AI is hiring a staff technical program manager for V-BAT work in Dallas. The role owns integrated program execution across UAS, autonomy, mission systems, customer delivery, test readiness, and cross-functional engineering plans.

This is not a pure operations role. It sits close to the productized aircraft capability: requirements, interfaces, verification, technical baselines, customer acceptance, and delivery cadence all have to line up.

What you would work on

• Lead execution for complex UAS, autonomy, mission-system, and customer-delivery programs
• Own integrated plans, milestones, critical paths, dependencies, risks, decisions, and change control
• Coordinate system integration and test across hardware, software, autonomy, systems engineering, manufacturing, flight operations, cybersecurity, and field teams
• Build program metrics and dashboards for integration readiness, release performance, risk posture, and requirements verification

What they are asking for

• Senior technical program, systems engineering, aerospace, defense, robotics, autonomy, or UAS experience
• Experience leading cross-functional programs that deliver integrated products or customer capabilities
• Systems-engineering fluency around requirements, interfaces, verification, validation, test planning, and technical baselines
• Ability to communicate technical status, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions to engineering leaders, executives, customers, and external stakeholders
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance

Why this one is worth a look

V-BAT is a fielded autonomous aircraft platform, so the program work has real hardware, software, test, and customer constraints. For someone who likes product-adjacent robotics work but wants to stay close to integration and delivery, this is a high-signal TPM role.