Responsibilities

The Director, USAF Growth Campaign Leader leads the internal operating rhythm that enables Shield AI’s UAS pursuits with the United States Air Force. Opportunity-focused Go-To-Market (GTM) leaders retain ownership of their customers, capture strategies, account plans, and individual pursuits. This role serves as the connective tissue across those leaders, integrating information across the USAF portfolio and providing the VP, Mission Solutions for the X-BAT FoS with a clear, decision-ready view of campaign health, priorities, dependencies, risks, mitigations, and resource requirements.
The Director connects USAF pursuits with relevant activity across other Services, allied and partner nations, product and engineering, government approvals, aircraft and test availability, internal investment, and industrial strategy. The role identifies shared dependencies and resource conflicts early, helps sequence competing demands, and coordinates the cross-functional support required for GTM leads to execute their captures effectively.
GTM leads remain accountable for customer engagement, account planning, capture strategy, win strategy, price-to-win, proposal content, and pursuit outcomes. The Director enables their success by improving coordination, reducing friction around shared resources, and ensuring that the broader organization is aligned behind the highest-priority USAF opportunities.
Scope & authority:
This is a senior, high-visibility seat with authority, not a reporting function:
Portfolio: Concurrent USAF pursuits across the X-BAT FoS, representing a multi-billion-dollar addressable opportunity.
Team: Leadership by influence role, leveraging dedicated capture-operations and analyst support, with the expectation to build the team as the portfolio scales.
Investment: Develops and co-stewards annual campaign and indirect investment against prioritized campaign returns.
Governance: holds a standing seat in USAF bid/no-bid and investment-prioritization reviews and sets the agenda for the executive campaign review.
Growth path: a pipeline role toward senior Department of the Navy growth or general-management leadership at Shield AI.
Own the USAF view. Build and maintain the integrated USAF campaign picture across all X-BAT FoS USAF pursuits: strategy status, critical path, milestones, dependencies, decision points, and campaign health in one authoritative view.
Enable GTM leads. Give each GTM lead the templates, playbooks, data, competitive inputs, cost and schedule inputs, and cross-functional access they need to build and execute their own capture plan. Success is measured by their outcomes, not by your visibility.

Qualification

12–20+ years in capture managementStrong executive communicationComfort operating in ambiguousExperience supporting DoWExperience within business developmentExperience supporting executive staffSuccess in this role

Required

U.S. person as defined by ITAR (22 CFR 120.62), with the ability to obtain and maintain a DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and Special Access Program (SAP) eligibility.
12–20+ years in capture management, program management, strategic operations, business operations, technical program management, or a comparable cross-functional leadership role.
Demonstrated success leading highly complex initiatives with multiple interdependent workstreams across engineering, business development, operations, finance, and executive leadership.
Working knowledge of how USAF programs actually get funded and fielded — SAF/AQ and HAF staffing processes, PEO and program-office dynamics, the PPBE/POM cycle, and rapid-acquisition pathways such as OTAs, CSOs, SBIR/STRATFI, AFWERX, and the transition from prototype to program of record.
Proven ability to influence without direct authority and to drive accountability across functions and geographies.
Strong executive communication: leadership briefings, dashboards, metrics, and decision-support materials that lead to decisions rather than discussion.
Deep operational rigor in integrated schedules, critical path, milestones, action tracking, dependency management, and risk mitigation.
Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-changing environments with competing priorities across multiple time zones.
A service orientation toward the GTM leads this role supports, and the judgment to know when to escalate versus resolve quietly.

Preferred

Active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance and current Special Access Program accesses.
Experience supporting DoW, aerospace, autonomy, robotics, aviation, or defense-technology organizations.
Experience within business development, capture, proposal operations, strategic planning, or growth organizations running multiple concurrent U.S. Government pursuits.
Familiarity with the export and international mechanisms that shape USAF pursuits — foreign disclosure determinations, FMS/DCS pathways, and security cooperation planning — where allied demand affects the USAF business case.
Experience building executive dashboards, KPIs, operational scorecards, or portfolio health metrics.
Experience supporting executive staff, chief-of-staff organizations, Strategy and Operations teams, or enterprise PMOs.
Fluency with integrated schedule and work-management tooling (e.g., Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Jira), and an advanced degree or relevant certification (MBA, PMP, Lean Six Sigma) is a plus but not required.
Success in this role:

Director, USAF Growth Campaign Leader (X-BAT Family of Systems) (R6358) at Shield · LumiJobs

Director, USAF Growth Campaign Leader (X-BAT Family of Systems) (R6358)

Responsibilities

Qualification

Required

Preferred

Benefits

Company

Shield

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