Principal Technical Product Manager - Defense Autonomy Platforms

Job Description: Principal Technical Product Manager – Defense Autonomy Platforms

About KrateoSky

KrateoSky is building the trusted Western champion in AI aerial robotics—a unified perception and actuation platform that will make the skies the world's most trusted and transformative engine of productivity. We are not a drone company. We are the autonomy infrastructure powering robotic flight and aerial intervention across defense, industry, and public safety. We are executing a rapid roll-up strategy to consolidate best-in-class technologies, creating the first at-scale, AI-native alternative.

Speed and scale define our competitive advantage. We move fast by questioning assumptions, removing complexity, and rapidly demonstrating over analyzing. We scale by building certifiable platforms on reusable architectures. Our AI-native, digitally connected ecosystem amplifies this advantage, automating tedious work so engineers focus on novel problem-solving. We keep our back office small and our organization flat to maintain velocity and operate as one integrated team with real-time visibility into trade-offs, risks, and progress.

You're joining at the beginning when your decisions define how we scale to Western leadership. We're building a dream team of high performers to establish the processes, tools, and culture that enable rapid acquisition integration and platform scalability for missions that matter. No PowerPoint purgatory, no "that's how aerospace does it" sacred cows. First principles, data-driven decisions, hands-on execution.

Position Summary

The TPM acts as the execution-focused product owner for the defense autonomy platform, translating capability standards, system requirements, and field needs into backlog, interface definitions, release priorities, and accepted product increments. You will turn operator needs, customer workflows, integration constraints, and open-architecture requirements into a modular software platform that can be reused across mission sets while meeting the stricter demands of defense environments. This role sits at the intersection of field reality, software architecture, and execution speed—shaping what we build, why we build it, and how it gets adopted.

Senior hands-on IC role: This is a high-agency individual contributor role with broad technical and cross-functional influence. You will be hands-on from day one—writing requirements, shaping interfaces, building fast prototypes, reviewing trade-offs with engineers, and pressure-testing product decisions directly with military users, commercial operators, and integration stakeholders. We are looking for a builder who has shipped real systems—not PowerPoints, not just theoretical plans that never left the whiteboard. You think in systems but can get deep into the details when needed.

You are AI-native in how you work—AI assistants are your default environment. You generate boilerplate, product requirements documents (PRDs), API interface specs, and rapid software prototypes (such as interface simulations and UI visualizers), and documentation with LLMs, and you use AI for parsing complex defense software standards, commercial integration requirements, and operator feedback data. You see AI as the reason a small, elite team can outperform a traditional organization three times its size.

Embody our values and behaviors—deliver precision and quality, challenge how things are done, break problems into fundamentals, automate relentlessly, hold yourself accountable, and deliver together no matter the obstacles. You must exhibit Above the Line behaviors: operating as a Coach, Creator, and Challenger rather than a Victim, Hero, or Villain. You apply automation-first thinking: your default instinct is 'how do we eliminate this manual task' not 'who can I assign this to.' You act as a humble teacher, prioritizing ego-free knowledge sharing and documentation discipline. Finally, you maintain a strong PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) orientation, demonstrating a willingness to experiment, learn from failure, and iterate.

Key Responsibilities

• Defense Autonomy Product Ownership: Own the software product strategy, interface definitions, and execution roadmap for KrateoSky’s defense autonomy platform. Translate Concepts of Operations (ConOps), operator workflows, and mission integration constraints into product roadmaps, backlog priorities, interface requirements, and accepted capabilities, while operating within the standards, methods, and reference architectures established by the AS Capability Leader..

• Program Backlog Ownership & Release Readiness: Own, prioritize, and continuously refine the platform backlog. Lead release planning / planning increment cadences, define acceptance criteria for capabilities, and formally accept completed features against product, interface, and mission requirements.

• Program Control & Execution Visibility: Establish and manage integrated product baselines across scope, dependencies, and delivery milestones. Transition from lightweight agile forecasting to AI-assisted EVM-lite tracking where needed. Actively manage risks, issues, and opportunities (RIOs) using threshold-based triggers to surface execution variance early.

• Operator & Customer Engagement: Stay close to warfighters, commercial operators, program stakeholders, primes, and integration partners. Gather direct user feedback, validate product assumptions in the field, represent KrateoSky at relevant customer and industry forums, and convert external signal into clear product decisions.

• System Building & Documentation: Build processes from the ground up that are mature enough to be taught, documented, and replicated across future KrateoSky acquisitions.

• AI-Native Execution: Make AI-augmented workflows the default; automate repetitive tasks; use AI for analysis, documentation, and error-catching; target 3-5x productivity gains over traditional approaches.

• AI-Native Use Cases:

  • AI-Augmented Program Control: Use AI workflows for dependency mapping, predictive delivery forecasting, schedule risk surfacing, automated RIO summarization, and elimination of manual program / portfolio status reporting.
  • Interface & Control Artifact Generation: Wield LLMs to generate draft interface control documents, schema definitions, API contracts, and message specifications aligned to defense and commercial integration needs.
  • DoD Standard Compliance Audit: Run automated LLM-based gap analyses comparing product architecture, interfaces, and modular boundaries against relevant military software standards and open-architecture requirements (e.g., MOSA, OMS, STANAG 4586, UCI/UCS where applicable).
  • Customer Voice & Feedback Ingestion: Use automated ingestion pipelines and transcript analyzers to parse warfighter interviews, commercial operator feedback, support logs, mission after-action reports, and flight telemetry into structured backlog items.
  • Functional Simulation Prototyping: Leverage code-generation AI to write lightweight Python-based visualizers, simulator integration scripts, and system mockups to demo product concepts to defense and commercial customers.

• Post-Acquisition Platform Onboarding: Support the technical onboarding of newly acquired portfolio companies onto shared autonomy platform patterns, interface conventions, and product management toolchains. Drive alignment on backlog structure, integration assumptions, and reusable software boundaries where product convergence is required.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with the AS Capability Leader, SEIT Capability Leader, VP of Defense, Chief Software Engineers, and field/integration teams to ensure software requirements remain aligned to system-level requirements, interface baselines and deployment realities.

• Team Leadership & Culture: Operate as a senior individual contributor with outsized influence across engineering, defense-facing teams, commercial stakeholders, and field teams. Set the bar for product rigor, clear documentation, and decision quality without a team-building mandate.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in Technical Product Management, Software Engineering, Systems Architecture, or a closely related discipline, with significant time spent leading product decisions in defense, national security, unmanned systems, or dual-use autonomy environments.

• Proven Track Record: You have a demonstrated history of designing and delivering software-defined autonomy, robotics or mission systems products specifically within a defense or national security context (not just commercial systems, R&D/lab demos, or theoretical designs), ideally in drone, robotic or unmanned system environments.

• Agile & Program Control Expertise: Demonstrated experience owning and prioritizing a complex backlog in an Agile product environment, combined with experience in structured program control such as integrated baseline management, EVM-lite tracking, or disciplined RIO management.

• Technical Depth:

  • Expertise in military open-architecture and mission-system standards (e.g., MOSA, OMS, STANAG 4586, UCI/UCS, or comparable frameworks), autonomy software interfaces, reusable platform design, and embedded or edge-deployed software systems.
  • Experience with multi-agent, collaborative autonomy or 1:many mission concepts.
  • Comfortable making build-vs-buy decisions and recognizing "what good looks like."

• AI-Native Proficiency: LLMs and modern AI tools (e.g., Cursor/Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, and low-code agents like n8n) are your default environment; you have achieved measurable productivity gains from AI-augmented workflows.

• Clearance Eligibility: Due to the nature of this role and the work performed, candidates must be eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Defense Secret security clearance.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience at high-velocity startups or companies that have shipped at scale.

• Experience productizing a shared autonomy or robotics software stack across both defense and commercial deployments is strongly preferred.

• Prior involvement in M&A technical software due diligence or post-acquisition architecture integration.

• Advanced degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, or Robotic Systems.

• Specific Industry Experience: Direct experience working with DIU (Defense Innovation Unit) contracts, Blue UAS compliance, or military programs of record.

• Relevant certifications such as PMP, SAFe PM/PO, or comparable Agile / program management credentials.

Logistics

• Location: Remote (US-based)

• Reports To: Autonomy and Software (AS) Capability Leader

• Travel: 10% (site visits, customer engagements, and defense/industry conferences)

• Compensation: $131,000 - $203,000 (Targeted base; total package includes comprehensive benefits)