VP of Product at Paladin (S18) $160K - $200K We deploy autonomous drones to 911 calls. Our software gives first responders a live overhead view of a scene before they arrive. Houston, TX, US / Remote (US) Full-time Will sponsor 6+ years About Paladin Paladin deploys autonomous drones to 911 calls. Our first drone, Knighthawk, arrives on the scene of an emergency in under 90 seconds and gives first responders a live overhead view of the scene before they arrive, helping reduce response times and increase situational awareness. Knighthawk is a fully autonomous LTE drone with unlimited range, a 55 minute battery life, and is responding to over 130 calls each week across several cities. Over the next decade, our tech will be in every city across the world helping first responders save lives. About the role Location: Houston, TX (Hybrid) Reports to: CEO Direct Reports: Product Lead (team of PMs), Customer Success & Integration Manager (onboarding + trainers), Forward-Deployed Engineering Lead (24/7 reliability pod) Future Scope: Build a small Product R&D “tiger team” to fast-track validated prototypes (hardware + software + AI) The Role Own vision → roadmap → delivery across Paladin’s stack (Knighthawk, EXT, Watchtower, Vanguard). Your mandate: ship things customers truly want, raise reliability in mission-critical environments, and turn field signal into decisive product bets. You’ll align Engineering, CS/Integration, Sales, and Ops around clear priorities, quality bars, and measurable outcomes. Responsibilities Strategy & Roadmap: Define multi-year strategy and annual/quarterly roadmaps; segment use-cases (police, fire, EMS), and align pricing/packaging with Sales/Finance. Org Leadership: Develop leaders (PM, CS/Integration, FDE); set goals, hiring plans, and career paths; stand up the R&D tiger team with crisp entry/exit criteria. Product Operations: Establish discovery cadence (ride-alongs, customer councils), PRD/RFC standards, roadmap rituals, beta programs, and launch checklists. Execution & Quality: Gate releases with acceptance criteria, safety/reliability bars, and telemetry; ensure staged rollouts, feature flags, and rollback plans. Field-Driven Prioritization: Convert incidents and onboarding friction into backlog items, diagnostics, and automation; reduce repeat issues quarter over quarter. Onboarding & Outcomes: With CS/Integration, drive 30/60/90-day time-to-value, certification/training paths, and BVLOS/waiver readiness materials. Integrations: Prioritize CAD/RMS, VMS, ADS-B/UTM, storage/retention paths, and agency IT/security needs that unlock deployments. Go-to-Market Readiness: Coordinate Docs, enablement, serviceability/spares, and post-launch quality reviews with clear owners and timelines. Data & Measurement: Define golden signals/SLOs (uptime, latency, dispatch-to-air), instrument usage and reliability, and publish dashboards. Field Presence: Regular site visits and launch support; be visibly present with lighthouse agencies to pressure-test roadmap bets. Success Metrics (examples) Adoption/Value: ≥85% of new agencies fully onboarded in ≤45 days; weekly active operators up ≥20% YoY. Reliability: SLO attainment ≥99.5%; MTTR down ≥30% in 2 quarters; repeat-incident rate down ≥40% YoY. Quality: Post-launch defect escape rate down ≥25%; rollback frequency trending to near-zero for GA releases. Business Impact: Improved win rate in target segments; attach rate of new modules (e.g., Vanguard features) up ≥15%; expansion in existing cities. Qualifications 6+ years in Product for complex systems (hardware + software + cloud/edge); 2+ years building and leading PM orgs. Track record shipping field-reliable, safety-critical or high-availability products; strong partnership with Engineering/CS/Ops/Sales. Mastery of product ops: customer discovery → PRD/RFC → validation → staged launch → measurement → iteration. Fluency with reliability practices (SLOs/SLA, incident reviews, feature flags, canaries, rollbacks) and data-informed decision-making. Excellent executive communication; comfortable on rooftops/docks, in command centers, and in boardrooms. Willing to travel and work onsite as needed. Nice to Have Public-safety/DFR/BVLOS exposure; ADS-B/UTM, LTE/5G, robotics/edge AI familiarity. Experience with telemetry/observability, GIS/video pipelines, CJIS-aligned workflows, and integrations (CAD/RMS/VMS). Working Model Hybrid Houston with 25–40% travel (spikes for deployments and major launches); regular ride-alongs/site visits. Technology We build LTE-enabled autonomous drones that respond to 911 calls and can stream a live video feed with subsecond latency over celluar networks. Our drones have unlimited range, a 55+ minute battery life, and can be controlled from anywhere in the world with the touch of one button. Our stack is divided into software, hardware, electrical, embedded, and video engineering all tied into one system that helps first responders save lives.