About the role
Founded in 2015, 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 and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft. 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 Principal, Customer Success to establish and lead the Aircraft Division Customer Success function and own the Critical Accounts Program for V-BAT and X-BAT customers. This leader will ensure customers achieve mission value, operational readiness, adoption, and long-term success across the full customer lifecycle. This role combines team leadership, customer success execution, executive account governance, operational awareness, and critical-account recovery. The ideal candidate has led customer-facing teams in aerospace, defense, aviation, complex enterprise, or mission-critical technology environments and can create repeatable customer operating rhythms while responding decisively to escalated, at-risk, or strategically sensitive accounts. As the owner of the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program, this leader will establish clear account health criteria, executive visibility, cross-functional recovery plans, risk burn-down discipline, decision cadence, and accountable closure. This person will serve as a senior customer advocate and cross-functional leader, ensuring customer risks are surfaced early, resolved with urgency, and converted into lasting improvements across product, operations, training, sustainment, and support. \n
What you'll do: 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. Lead, coach, and develop a team of Customer Success Managers responsible for customer adoption, readiness, mission value, and long-term account success. Build and operate the Customer Success operating model, including 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, sustainment needs, and executive stakeholder alignment. Establish clear ownership and operating rhythms across Customer Success, Deployment Operations, Flight Operations, Training, Sustainment, Program Management, Sales, Product, Engineering, Quality, and Mission Operations. Lead the Aircraft Division Critical Accounts Program for escalated, at-risk, high-priority, or strategically sensitive customers. Define and manage CAP entry criteria, severity levels, account health triggers, escalation paths, exit criteria, and executive reporting standards. Lead cross-functional critical account reviews with clear owners, decision logs, recovery plans, customer communications, root-cause analysis, and measurable closure criteria. Provide senior leadership with concise, action-oriented visibility into account risk, customer sentiment, mission impact, commercial exposure, and recovery status. Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Training, Sustainment, and Business Development to drive permanent corrective actions and prevent recurring customer issues. Serve as a senior customer advocate for V-BAT and X-BAT customers, ensuring Shield AI understands customer mission needs, operating constraints, adoption barriers, readiness expectations, and growth opportunities. Translate customer feedback into clear product, support, training, documentation, sustainment, and operational