Instructor & Customer Success Manager

What you’ll do:

- Lead, develop, and mentor a team of customer training professionals and UAV instructors.

- Establish team priorities, performance expectations, staffing plans, and professional-development pathways.

- Oversee the development and delivery of classroom, simulator, flight, maintenance, and scenario-based training for Shield AI products.

- Ensure training programs prepare customers to safely operate, maintain, deploy, and effectively employ Shield AI systems.

- Maintain high instructional standards through instructor qualification, observation, coaching, certification, and continuous evaluation.

- Lead the development and standardization of curricula, lesson plans, lecture materials, simulator scenarios, practical exercises, assessments, and supporting documentation.

- Ensure student training records, instructor qualifications, course materials, and program metrics remain current and accurate.

- Coordinate training schedules, aircraft, simulators, facilities, airspace, frequency management, personnel, and other operational resources.

- Communicate directly with customers and partner-force leadership regarding training requirements, student progress, operational readiness, and program outcomes.

- Build lasting customer relationships through continuous engagement, refresher training, and support for effective product utilization.

- Adapt training for students with varying technical abilities, operational backgrounds, cultural contexts, and levels of experience.

- Support domestic and international training events, including extended deployments when required.

- Deliver instruction and provide hands-on training support when mission or staffing needs require it.

- Partner with engineering, product, design, and flight-operations teams to incorporate customer and instructor feedback into product and training improvements.

- Support new-product validation, testing, field evaluations, and the development of training capabilities for new product releases.

- Collaborate with business-development and sales teams to demonstrate Shield AI products to prospective customers.

- Establish and monitor training-program metrics, identify performance gaps, and implement improvements that increase safety, consistency, scalability, and customer success.

- Ensure training activities comply with applicable company policies, safety requirements, security procedures, aviation regulations, and customer expectations.

Required qualifications:

- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

- Five or more years of experience in technical, aviation, military, or UAS training.

- Two or more years of experience leading instructors, training teams, or comparable operational teams.

- Demonstrated experience developing and delivering classroom, simulator, flight, maintenance, or scenario-based instruction.

- Working knowledge of UAS operations, flight and mission planning, aviation safety, and training operations.

- Ability and willingness to travel internationally up to 50%, including for extended periods when required.

- Strong written, verbal, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills.

- Fluent in Ukrainian

- Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical and operational information to audiences with varying levels of experience.

- Experience managing multiple training events, resources, schedules, and customer requirements in a dynamic environment.

- Effective, highly logical problem-solver who remains focused on safety, learning outcomes, and customer success.

- Ability to work across organizational boundaries while maintaining a big-picture perspective and attention to operational details.

Preferred qualifications:

- Graduate degree in education, instructional design, aviation, engineering, business, or a related field.

- Significant UAS experience as a pilot in command, instructor, maintainer, or mission operator.

- More than 1,000 hours of UAS pilot-in-command experience.

- Experience instructing or operating Group 1–3 UAS.

- Former Ukrainian military service or comparable defense-sector experience.

- Strong understanding of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, allied defense organizations, and international partner-force environments.

- Tactical field experience and knowledge of small-unit tactics.

- Prior overseas training or operational experience.

- Experience managing training programs for international customers and working across cultural and language differences.

- Experience with content-authoring and presentation tools such as PowerPoint, Prezi, http://Beautiful.ai , Camtasia, or comparable platforms.

- Experience with learning-management systems and online training-authoring or delivery tools.

- Experience supporting product demonstrations, new-product testing, curriculum validation, or fielding of emerging technologies.