Scale is accelerating the development of AI across the world's most important
organizations, including the U.S. Department of War (DoW), its constituent
services, and the broader U.S. National Security industry. The Product Manager,
Public Sector will lead Scale's product efforts across two connected focus areas
— military planning and real-time AI and Alerting (LUX) — shaping real
production outcomes and translating messy operational reality into high-signal
input for the core platform.
This is not a roadmap PM, a CSM, or a solutions engineer. This PM owns product
outcomes for a cross-cutting portfolio of AI and data capabilities: earning deep
trust with senior military, civilian, and mission stakeholders, driving
deployments to production inside classified and operationally constrained
environments, identifying where the product is the bottleneck vs. execution, and
feeding durable, specific signal back to Scale's platform team. The best
candidates have shipped AI or real-time data products into defense or other
large, security-constrained organizations and can tell the difference between a
customer's stated request, their actual problem, and what the platform should
do.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
* Own product outcomes across Scale's military planning portfolio and/or its
highest-impact national security accounts for LUX, spanning multiple DoW and
National Security stakeholders and use cases. You are the accountable PM for
product delivery and customer value.
* Translate operational reality into high-signal product input for engineering
and platform teams — specific, evidence-backed product perspective with
tradeoffs articulated, not requirements docs. This includes military planning
workflows (e.g., the Joint Planning Process) and modeling/simulation
requirements (e.g., AFSIM), as well as real customer workflows,
latency/throughput constraints, and mission priorities for LUX.
* Build trusted advisory relationships with senior military leaders
(flag/general officer and senior civilian equivalents), National Security
customer stakeholders, and senior technical leads. Become the reliable
escalation point on the Scale side before issues surface externally.
* Drive deployments from contract to production inside classified and
operationally constrained environments — whether that means military planning
workflows or LUX's low-latency, high-throughput, mission-critical data
systems. You know what "production-ready" means inside DoW, and you close the
gap.
* Distinguish where the product is the constraint from where execution,
integration, policy, or change management is the constraint. Drive each type
of blocker to resolution through the right channel.
* Shape a cross-cutting set of solutions spanning multiple stakeholders,
echelons, and use cases, rather than owning a single point deployment.
* Partner closely with Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) teams and Platform
Capability teams so the account runs as a coordinated team, not a set of
parallel workstreams.
* Identify and develop expansion opportunities grounded in demonstrated
customer value.
* Represent customer reality to the platform and leadership with enough
credibility that it changes decisions.
* Balance competing requirements across CCMDs and service components that must
collaborate despite differing needs — distinct from building for a single
customer.
* Travel as required to customer sites, including classified facilities.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
CORE COMPETENCIES:
* Enterprise deployment ownership: has driven AI/ML or complex/real-time
software products from contract to production at scale — including
near-zero-to-one, with no real users yet — with real integration, real
security constraints, and real change management.
* Domain fluency: working knowledge of the military planning process and
modeling/simulation tools (e.g., Joint Planning Process, AFSIM), and/or the
tradeoffs inherent to real-time, event-driven, high-throughput data
architectures and their implications for AI agents — and how each shapes
product decisions.
* Product judgment in the field: translates customer reality into product
direction, not just feature requests; can say no credibly and explain why.
* Customer trust-building: earns and maintains trust with demanding senior
military, civilian, and mission stakeholders over multi-quarter engagements;
manages conflict without eroding the relationship.
* Technical translation: bridges the gap between customer engineering/planning
teams and Scale platform engineers; adds interpretation rather than simply
relaying messages.
* Operating in ambiguity and constrained environments: creates structure where
there is none; makes decisions with incomplete information inside classified
settings; does not wait for fully defined requirements.
* Clear, precise communication: adjusts for audience (senior leader vs.
engineer vs. PM); writes and speaks at the right level of detail; does not
over- or under-explain.
MUST-HAVE:
* Active TOP SECRET security clearance (TS/SCI eligibility preferred).
* 6+ years in product management, technical program management, or a
customer-facing product ownership role
* Direct experience working with the U.S. Department of War (DoW) or the
broader U.S. national security community.
* Working knowledge of at least one of the following, with an ability to speak
credibly to the other:
* The military planning process (e.g., the Joint Planning Process) and
modeling/simulation systems (e.g., AFSIM).
* Real-time streaming data systems — event-driven architectures, low-latency
pipelines, and high-throughput data processing — and how they behave in
production.
* Demonstrated record of shipping AI or data products into large, constrained,
classified, or highly regulated organizations — not pilots or
proofs-of-concept. You can name the customer, the scale, the integration, and
what production actually looked like.
* Extreme ownership and follow-through: closes loops without reminders, drives
outcomes across teams without formal authority, holds self and others to
commitments.
* Comfortable operating with senior military/civilian/mission stakeholders and
senior engineers simultaneously; credible presence in high-stakes rooms on
both sides.
* Strong judgment under pressure: makes good calls quickly with incomplete
information, knows when to escalate vs. resolve, does not generate thrash.
* Technical fluency sufficient to hold a real conversation with a platform
engineer about architectural tradeoffs — not deep coding, but genuine
comprehension of how systems work in production.
* Ability to shape a cross-cutting set of solutions across multiple
stakeholders and use cases, rather than customer-specific solutions.
* Ability to travel, including to classified facilities.
NICE-TO-HAVE:
* Direct experience with AI/ML platform products — agentic capabilities,
human-agent interaction, large-scale data, some T&E; or data labeling, RLHF,
fine-tuning workflows, and model evaluation pipelines.
* Hands-on familiarity with streaming technologies (e.g., Kafka, Flink,
Kinesis) or the operational systems that consume them.
* Experience in a startup or early-stage environment where process didn't exist
and had to be created.
* Prior forward-deployed or embedded role (consulting, field PM, solutions
engineering with ownership).
* Prior military service or DoD/DoW civilian experience in an operations,
planning, or acquisitions role.
Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity,
and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and
maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of
several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview
process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related
skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant
education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity
based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can
share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during
the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for
equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to:
comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a
learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may
be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.
Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be
located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time
position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is:
$210,000—$345,000 USD
Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be
located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time
position in the locations of Washington DC, Texas, Colorado, Hawaii is:
$200,000—$311,000 USD
PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering
candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough
evaluation of all applicants.
About Us:
At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most
important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack
technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and
governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact.
We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst & Young, Mayo Clinic,
Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the
Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of
AI applications.
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