Senior Manager, Customer Success (R5273)

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Job Description:

Shield AI is seeking a Senior Manager, Customer Success to establish, lead, and scale the Aircraft Division Customer Success function supporting V-BAT and X-BAT customers. This leader will manage a team of Customer Success Managers and ensure customers achieve sustained mission value, operational readiness, product adoption

The Senior Manager will define the Customer Success strategy, operating model, organizational structure, performance expectations, and engagement standards for U.S. government, allied defense, and strategic commercial customers. This role requires a leader who can build a high-performing customer-facing team while remaining directly engaged with complex, high-priority, and strategically sensitive accounts.

This position will also lead the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program, establishing the governance and operating discipline required to identify customer risk early, coordinate cross-functional recovery, maintain executive visibility, and drive issues to measurable closure. The Senior Manager will serve as a senior customer advocate and ensure customer challenges result in lasting improvements across product, operations, training, sustainment, and support.

What you'll do:

Lead and Scale the Customer Success Function

• Establish and lead the Aircraft Division Customer Success function supporting V-BAT and X-BAT customers across U.S. government, allied defense, and strategic commercial accounts.
• Manage, coach, and develop a team of Customer Success Managers responsible for customer adoption, operational readiness, mission value, and long-term account success.
• Define team structure, roles, responsibilities, account assignments, performance expectations, and career development plans.
• Recruit and onboard Customer Success talent as the customer base and Aircraft Division continue to grow.
• Set team priorities and allocate resources based on customer risk, strategic importance, operational activity, and business needs.
• Establish measurable team and individual goals and conduct regular performance evaluations, coaching, and development discussions.
• Build a culture of urgency, accountability, professionalism, transparency, operational excellence, and customer advocacy.

Build the Customer Success Operating Model

• Develop and operate a scalable Customer Success model that includes account segmentation, customer health scoring, success plans, engagement cadence, executive business reviews, and lifecycle governance.
• Ensure priority customers have documented success plans tied to mission outcomes, readiness objectives, adoption milestones, training requirements, sustainment needs, and executive stakeholder alignment.
• Establish standards for customer onboarding, operational transition, training coordination, sustainment handoffs, adoption management, and recurring mission-value reviews.
• Create repeatable processes, templates, playbooks, and governance mechanisms that allow the Customer Success organization to scale.
• Define clear ownership and operating rhythms across Customer Success, Deployment Operations, Flight Operations, Training, Sustainment, Program Management, Sales, Product, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, and Mission Operations.
• Partner with Aircraft Operations leadership to establish organizational priorities, resource requirements, operating plans, and functional performance goals.

Lead the Critical Accounts Program

• Own and operate the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program for escalated, at-risk, high-priority, or strategically sensitive customers.
• Define Critical Accounts Program entry criteria, severity levels, account-health triggers, escalation paths, executive engagement requirements, and exit criteria.
• Lead cross-functional critical-account reviews with clear owners, recovery plans, decision logs, customer communication strategies, risk-reduction actions, and measurable closure criteria.
• Assign and hold internal owners accountable for recovery actions, commitments, and due dates.
• Ensure the appropriate technical, operational, sustainment, supply, quality, program, and executive resources are engaged based on the severity and mission impact of each account.
• Provide senior leadership with concise, action-oriented visibility into customer risk, mission impact, customer sentiment, commercial exposure, and recovery status.
• Personally support customer engagements involving significant operational risk, executive attention, or strategic importance.
• Conduct post-recovery reviews to ensure root causes are addressed and lessons learned are incorporated into products, processes, training, sustainment, and support.

Advocate for Customer Mission Success

• Serve as a senior customer advocate for V-BAT and X-BAT customers and ensure Shield AI understands their missions, operating environments, readiness expectations, adoption barriers, and long-term objectives.
• Build trusted relationships with senior military, government, operational, and enterprise stakeholders.
• Translate customer feedback into clear product, support, training, documentation, sustainment, and operational requirements.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Training, Sustainment, and Business Development to resolve customer issues and implement permanent corrective actions.
• Ensure customer feedback, operational lessons, and recurring issues are incorporated into product and service improvement priorities.
• Support strategic customer engagements, demonstrations, exercises, operational deployments, executive briefings, and business reviews as needed.
• Identify risks and opportunities that could affect customer retention, mission success, future adoption, or account growth.

Establish Metrics and Executive Visibility

• Own Customer Success dashboards, account-health assessments, risk registers, success plans, Critical Accounts Program reporting, and executive operating reviews.
• Define and track indicators including mission readiness, product adoption, training progress, fleet availability, support responsiveness, issue aging, customer sentiment, renewal or expansion risk, and executive engagement.
• Establish regular reporting cadences that clearly communicate customer outcomes, emerging risks, functional performance, resource constraints, and required leadership decisions.
• Use customer and operational data to identify trends, recurring problems, systemic risks, and opportunities to improve the customer experience.
• Measure the effectiveness of the Customer Success organization and continuously improve team processes, tools, and operating rhythms.

Required qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in customer success, customer operations, account management, program management, field operations, professional services, aviation operations, defense technology, aerospace, or mission-critical enterprise technology.
• 5+ years of experience leading customer-facing, account management, support, field operations, program management, or Customer Success teams.
• Demonstrated experience hiring, managing, coaching, and developing high-performing teams.
• Experience building or scaling a Customer Success, customer operations, account management, or similar customer-facing function.
• Demonstrated success managing escalated, at-risk, executive-level, or mission-critical customer accounts.
• Experience operating structured escalation, customer-health, critical-account, executive-governance, or customer-recovery processes.
• Strong executive presence and the ability to communicate effectively with senior military, government, enterprise, and internal executive stakeholders.
• Ability to establish strategy while remaining actively engaged in customer execution and issue resolution.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguity, urgency, conflict, and high operational stakes.
• Strong understanding of customer lifecycle management, adoption, operational readiness, sustainment, support, renewals, and expansion.
• Experience defining performance metrics, operating cadences, team objectives, and executive reporting.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive briefings, account plans, recovery plans, and leadership updates.
• Ability to travel up to 15% and work effectively with customers and teams in operational, field, and headquarters environments.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience in defense, aerospace, autonomous systems, aviation, unmanned aircraft systems, software-defined systems, military operations, or operational technology deployed in austere environments.
• Experience supporting the Department of Defense, U.S. military services, allied defense organizations, or government customers.
• Experience with vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft systems, aviation operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, mission systems, autonomy, deployed operations, aircraft sustainment, or mission-critical field operations.
• Prior military service or direct experience working with operational military units.
• Experience designing or operating Critical Accounts Programs, enterprise escalation frameworks, technical account management programs, Customer Success operations, or executive sponsor programs.
• Experience managing customer-facing organizations supporting both hardware and software products.
• Experience with Salesforce, Gainsight, Jira, Confluence, Tableau, Power BI, or similar customer success, support, and reporting systems.
• Active Secret or Top Secret security clearance.

Full-time regular employee offer package:

Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity

Temporary employee offer package:

Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.

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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.