Director of Product

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT

Location: Onsite in Austin, TX

Compensation: $140K to $160K + Equity

About Centinus

Centinus delivers Physical AI for protective systems, enabling autonomous operations, real-time intelligence, and mission-critical decision support for defense, military, government, and public safety customers. Our software platform integrates unmanned systems, sensors, artificial intelligence, and command-and-control capabilities to help operators detect, assess, and respond to threats in complex operational environments.

About the Role

Centinus is seeking a Director of Product to lead product strategy, roadmap development, and prioritization across our autonomous systems, command-and-control, and situational awareness platform.

This role is responsible for bringing together company strategy, internal operational needs, market insights, customer feedback, and engineering capabilities into a clear product direction. Working closely with engineering, operations, business development, and executive leadership, the Director of Product will align stakeholders on what to build, why it matters, and how success is measured.

The ideal candidate brings proven product leadership, strong organizational and business judgment, and the ability to navigate competing priorities across teams. They should be technically conversant enough to collaborate effectively with software and systems engineers, assess feasibility and tradeoffs, and make informed product decisions without owning solution architecture or implementation.

This is a hands-on leadership role in a growing defense technology company, combining internal product ownership and cross-functional execution with targeted customer and partner engagement.

What You’ll Do

Product Strategy & Prioritization

• Define and own the product vision, roadmap, and priorities across Centinus's platform, aligned with company strategy and market opportunities.

• Synthesize input from engineering, operations, business development, leadership, and customers into a coherent, sequenced product plan.

• Evaluate new features and investments based on mission value, business impact, market differentiation, effort, and strategic fit.

• Establish measurable product goals and performance indicators, and use them to evaluate adoption, effectiveness, and delivery outcomes.

• Advise executive leadership on product tradeoffs, resource allocation, investment priorities, and longer-term platform direction.

Product Definition & Engineering Execution

• Drive roadmap, sprint, and release planning, balancing contractual delivery, platform reliability, technical debt, and long-term scalability.

• Own technical product requirements, prioritization, and backlog across C2, UAS autonomy, AI analytics, and sensor integration capabilities.

• Translate mission needs, CONOPS, customer commitments, and contractual requirements into specifications, workflows, user stories, and measurable acceptance criteria.

• Partner with engineering leadership to assess feasibility, dependencies, delivery risks, and implementation tradeoffs while preserving engineering ownership of architecture and design.

• Maintain sufficient understanding of platform capabilities, system architecture, integration constraints, and operational environments to guide product decisions.

• Coordinate with engineering, QA, and operations to validate release readiness, measure delivered outcomes, and incorporate operational feedback into subsequent releases.

Customer, Defense & Market Insights

• Engage with defense, military, government, and public safety customers as needed to understand mission objectives, workflows, and evolving requirements.

• Translate customer and operator insights, concepts of operations (CONOPS), and contractual commitments into product opportunities and clear priorities.

• Collaborate with business development and program teams on product scope for proposals, demonstrations, field evaluations, and delivery commitments.

• Distinguish broadly applicable platform capabilities from customer-specific requests, considering scalability, supportability, and commercial value.

• Track the defense technology landscape, competitive offerings, emerging use cases, and operational trends to inform product decisions.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in product management or product strategy, with meaningful ownership of software product roadmaps and released capabilities.

• Demonstrated ability to set product direction, make prioritization decisions, and drive results across multiple internal functions.

• Strong experience collaborating with software engineering teams and enough technical fluency to understand dependencies, feasibility, and tradeoffs.

• Proven ability to translate business goals, operational challenges, market insights, and customer needs into practical product requirements.

• Sound judgment in balancing strategic objectives, stakeholder requests, engineering capacity, delivery risk, and commercial considerations.

• Experience managing roadmaps, backlogs, release planning, product metrics, and Agile or similar product development processes.

• Excellent communication, analytical, decision-making, and cross-functional leadership skills, including the ability to influence without direct authority.

• Comfort operating in a fast-paced, growth-stage environment and taking ownership from initial decisions through release and adoption.

• Ability to travel periodically for team collaboration, customer discussions, demonstrations, and operational evaluations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with the U.S. Department of Defense, military organizations, federal agencies, defense contractors, or public safety organizations.

• Familiarity with defense acquisition, government contracts, program milestones, or mission-driven operational requirements.

• Experience with command-and-control (C2), intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), counter-UAS, autonomous systems, or mission-critical software.

• Working knowledge of AI/ML, sensor fusion, unmanned systems, geospatial applications, video intelligence, or related technologies.

• Experience managing products that combine software, hardware, integrations, or multiple technology partners.

• Exposure to military exercises, field evaluations, customer pilots, or government deployment environments.

• Active U.S. security clearance or eligibility to obtain one.

• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, computer science, or a related discipline; advanced degree is a plus.

• Austin, TX-based or willing to relocate candidates preferred.

Desired Attributes

• Strategic and pragmatic: Connects product investments to company objectives while maintaining focus on practical delivery and operational value.

• Cross-functional leader: Builds alignment among engineering, operations, business development, and leadership around shared product priorities.

• Decisive and structured: Brings clarity to ambiguity, evaluates competing requests, and makes timely, well-reasoned product decisions.

• Technically conversant: Engages credibly with engineering teams without needing to design or implement the underlying systems.

• Mission and market aware: Understands field realities and incorporates targeted customer and operator insights into sound product decisions.

• Hands-on and accountable: Owns product outcomes, communicates clearly, and follows through from strategy and prioritization to launch and improvement.

Compensation

The expected base salary range is $140,000–$160,000, plus company equity. Final compensation will depend on experience, qualifications, and alignment with the role.

Excited by the opportunity to shape the future of autonomous technology and build products that make a real-world impact? We'd love to hear from you. Apply today and help us bring the next generation of intelligent defense systems to life!