Technical Product Manager

Swarm Aero; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity in high-growth defense tech

Competitive base salary

Medical, dental, vision

401k

PTO & paid sick leave

Lunch provided

Job summary

Swarm Aero is looking for a Product Manager to define and maintain product specifications for Legion features. You will translate operator feedback, customer needs, and technical constraints into actionable requirements, owning features from concept through validation.

You will work closely with Product Design to ensure specifications translate into usable workflows and interfaces, while keeping decisions well-documented and aligned with stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Excellent writing and communication skills.
• Ability to translate operator feedback and constraints into product requirements.
• Strong judgment to discern customer requests from true product needs.
• Curiosity about technical details to inform decisions.
• Ability to facilitate cross-functional discussions with engineers and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Create clear, detailed product specifications for new features and capabilities.
• Turn customer needs and constraints into actionable requirements.
• Own bounded features from definition through validation and iteration.
• Collaborate with Product Design to translate specs into workflows and designs.
• Review designs and implementations against product intent and requirements.
• Facilitate discussions with government customers, contractors, operators, engineers, and internal teams.
• Capture decisions, feedback, and action items; update specs accordingly.
• Maintain decision history and commitments to keep the team aligned.

Skills

Strong writer

Turn customer needs into requirements

Product judgment

Ask clarifying questions

Technical curiosity

Job description

Swarm Aero is redefining air power, building the largest swarming UAV and the most versatile swarming aircraft network in the world. The company is moving quickly to launch the first aircraft designed specifically for swarming, as well as the Command & Control software to mobilize swarms of thousands of heterogeneous autonomous assets and empower human operators to achieve superhuman results.The team has created and exited multiple startups, negotiated defense deals worth billions of dollars, and designed and built 30+ novel aircraft, with aerospace experience from Scaled Composites, Airbus, Archer Aviation, Blue Origin, and Boom Supersonic.MissionTurn operational needs, customer feedback, and product direction into clear product specifications—and then drive those capabilities through decisions, design, development, and validation.You will work directly with the Head of Product on Legion and become a core contributor to both defining the product and running the process around it.

What You'll Own

• Create clear, detailed product specifications for new features and capabilities.
• Take customer needs, operator feedback, technical constraints, and product direction and turn them into actionable product requirements.
• Own bounded features from early definition through design, development, feedback, and validation.
• Work directly with Product Design to translate specifications into detailed workflows and Figma designs.
• Review designs and implementations against product intent and requirements.
• Facilitate product discussions with government customers, third-party contractors, operators, engineers, and internal stakeholders.
• Prepare agendas and clearly identify topics requiring feedback, decisions, or alignment.
• Capture decisions, unresolved issues, customer feedback, and action items.
• Incorporate meeting outcomes directly into product specifications and related artifacts.
• Maintain feature status, decision history, feedback registers, and key product commitments.
• Identify ambiguity, conflicting requirements, and missing decisions before they slow the team down.
• Track important product and contractual deliverables.
• Help prepare product reviews, demonstrations, and customer discussions.
• Create enough structure to keep the organization aligned without introducing unnecessary process.

What Great Looks Like

You are given a problem such as:"Operators need a better way to understand and respond to vehicle health issues during degraded communications."You meet with the relevant operators, engineers, customers, and stakeholders.You understand the underlying problem.You separate customer requests from actual product requirements.You identify edge cases and unresolved decisions.You write a product specification that clearly explains the intended behavior, workflows, system states, requirements, and open questions.You work with Product Design to turn that specification into a strong interface.You incorporate feedback, resolve ambiguity, and keep the feature moving until the capability works as intended.The Head of Product provides direction and reviews the most important decisions—but does not need to personally produce every artifact or manage every follow-up.

Early Expectations

Within the first few weeks, you should begin contributing directly to product specifications.Initially, you may draft sections of specifications or own smaller, well-bounded capabilities with guidance from the Head of Product.As your understanding of Legion, its operators, and the technical architecture grows, you will rapidly take ownership of larger features.We are not looking for someone who spends six months observing before contributing.

Person We're Looking For

• You are an excellent writer.
• You can take a complicated conversation and turn it into a clear product definition.
• You have strong product judgment and are comfortable making reasonable decisions when requirements are incomplete.
• You understand that a customer request is not automatically a product requirement.
• You are technically curious and capable of participating meaningfully in discussions with software engineers, systems engineers, operators, and external partners.
• You naturally ask questions like:
• What problem are we actually trying to solve?
• Who needs this capability?
• What should happen in this edge case?
• What does the operator see?
• What state is the system actually in?
• How will we know this works?
• Is this a product decision, an engineering decision, or a customer preference?
• You are highly organized, but organization is a means to an end.
• Your real job is creating clarity and moving product decisions forward.

Particularly Valuable Experience

Experience with any of the following would be especially valuable:

• Technical product management
• Complex B2B software
• Command-and-control systems
• Aerospace or defense
• Robotics or autonomous systems
• Mission planning
• Geospatial software
• Systems engineering
• Government programs
• Operational testing
• Requirements development

What This Role Is Not

This is not a project coordinator role.It is not a Scrum Master role.It is not an administrative Product Operations position.It is not someone whose primary contribution is scheduling meetings, maintaining Jira, or writing meeting minutes.Those activities may occasionally be necessary, but they are secondary.The primary contribution is:understanding product problems and defining excellent solutions.

Success After 90 Days

• You are independently drafting product specifications for bounded Legion features.
• Customer and operator feedback is consistently translated into clear product requirements.
• Product meetings result in updated specifications, decisions, and actionable follow-up.
• The Head of Product can delegate meaningful feature-definition work to you.
• Product Design receives clearer inputs and can move faster.
• Important product decisions and rationale are documented and traceable.

ITAR requirement

To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Swarm Aero is an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse backgrounds and experiences and make employment decisions without regard to race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, or disability.

What We Offer

• Meaningful equity in a high-growth defense technology company
• Competitive base salary commensurate with experience
• Medical, dental, vision, and 401k
• PTO and paid sick leave
• Monthly wellness stipend
• Daily catered lunch (office)
• Paid parental leave
• Direct impact on a critical national security mission
• A world-class team of engineers and operators solving genuinely hard problems