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 https://shield.ai/. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/shield-ai, X https://x.com/shieldaitech, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shield_ai, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Shield_AI.
JOB DESCRIPTION:
The Head of Deal Strategy and Execution (DSE) owns the operating model that turns Shield AI’s most complex, highest-value domestic and international opportunities into repeatable, executable transactions. This is not a traditional deal desk. It is a strategic deal architecture and execution function: a force multiplier for the field that helps teams build winning deal structures, terms, and negotiation approaches faster, accelerate cross-functional decisions, protect margin and risk posture, and convert successful one-off transactions into reusable plays.
The role exists because Shield AI’s opportunity set is increasingly defined by complex government and international transactions where a product sale alone is insufficient. Customers require combinations of autonomous platforms, software subscriptions, payloads, training, field services, integration, sustainment, and partner-led delivery. Each transaction introduces unique constraints around product maturity, delivery capacity, exportability, contracting pathway, pricing, and risk, and the company needs a single operating mechanism that translates all of it into viable, approvable, and scalable transactions.
This is a leadership role. The Head of DSE builds and directs three functions: Regional Deal Strategists embedded with BD teams, a central Business Proposals function, and an Architecture and Packaging capability. The constant is the operating principle: standardize what can be standardized, and elevate and deliberately govern what must be bespoke.
What you'll do:
-
- Team charter and operating model. Set engagement criteria, service levels, decision rights, approval thresholds, and the escalation framework. Define when DSE engages: a priority or non-standard opportunity involving complex configuration, international scope, a partner-led construct, a packaged offering, or an exception request.
- Cross-functional deal governance. Chair cross-functional deal reviews and ensure executives receive clear decisions, trade-offs, and recommendations. Convene BD Ops, Sales, Product, Finance, Legal, Contracts, Delivery, and Partnerships around a structured process rather than disconnected approval gates.
- Strategic deal architecture. Own the quality of deal strategy on priority pursuits: customer value hypothesis, solution configuration, commercial construct, pricing posture, terms, partner path, negotiation approach, and close plan. Challenge weak qualification and help account teams exit or reframe low-probability pursuits.
- Modular deal catalog and packaging. Direct the build and maintenance of the authoritative capability catalog: approved configurations, modular bundles, eligibility criteria, deployment assumptions, exclusions, dependencies, pricing guardrails, discount and volume logic, and delivery handoffs across hardware, software, subscriptions, services, training, sustainment, and integration.
- Deal plays and repeatability. Establish the deal-play roadmap aligned to GTM priorities, product maturity, and international growth. Turn wins, losses, and delivery outcomes into qualification tools, discovery guides, value narratives, proposal modules, negotiation guidance, and win-wire content the field can reuse in the flow of work.
- Exception governance. Govern pricing, terms, and delivery exceptions through clear thresholds and fast escalation, not bureaucracy. Serve as the escalation point for deal strategy conflict, cross-functional ambiguity, and strategic exceptions.
- Measurement and continuous improvement. Measure business impact: cycle time, deal velocity, win rate on strategic pursuits, gross-margin protection, exception volume, reuse rate, and delivery outcomes. Lead postmortems on won and lost strategic business and feed the lessons back into the pre-sales motion.
- Team leadership and role boundaries. Build and lead Regional Deal Strategists, the Business Proposals team, and the Architecture and Packaging function. Hold the line on the boundary that matters most: the Regional Deal Strategist owns the deal, and the Proposal Manager owns the submission.
- Enablement and incentives. Partner with the GTM Enablement Lead on trainings and enablement, and work with Rev Ops and Business Ops on buying-program and product and deal-structure related SPIFFs.
Current priorities:
-
- The agenda below reflects the founding priorities. Expect it to evolve as the organization matures.
- Stand up the organization. Charter, engagement criteria, decision rights, escalation paths, and service levels, published so the field knows when and how to engage DSE.
- Deal intake and triage. A structured intake that captures customer mission, use case, configuration, value, funding, timeline, procurement path, geography, export considerations, partners, delivery needs, and requested exceptions early, before heavy internal resources are committed.
- Modular capability catalog. Standard configurations and modular bundles across products, subscriptions, hardware, services, training, sustainment, integration, and partner components, with eligibility criteria, deployment assumptions, exclusions, and handoff requirements.
- Deal plays for priority segments. Repeatable plays for priority customer segments, use cases, geographies, routes to market, and part