Product Owner - Maritime (ASO & Smart Sensors)

Department: Product | Location: Hood River, OR (in-office, full-time) | Travel: Up to 30%

About this Role:

The Maritime Product Owner shapes the maritime vertical of our ASO software and Smart Sensors product line by bringing deep, first-hand industry expertise to bear on what we build and why. This role is the in-house authority on maritime ISR missions - surface search, vessel tracking and classification, dark-vessel detection, SAR, counter-narcotics, fisheries enforcement, and maritime domain awareness - and the trusted voice of the operator across Product, Engineering, Design, and Business Development. You will partner closely with our central Product Manager who owns delivery cadence, sprint mechanics, and cross-product backlog discipline; you feed that machine with validated mission problems, prioritized epics, and crisp requirements grounded in real operations.

This is an ideal role for someone with a maritime ISR or sensor operations background who wants to translate hard-earned operational expertise into a product that genuinely changes how maritime missions are flown. You will be expected to embrace AI aggressively - both because edge AI is the heart of our product, and because we expect our team to use modern AI tooling to move faster in everything we do.

This role is expected to be full-time (in office) in Hood River. We are NOT accepting candidates for Remote Work at this time.

What You'll Do:

• Be the In-House Maritime Subject Matter Expert
• Serve as the resident authority on maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, customer types, platforms, sensors, and operational realities; translate doctrine, jargon, and mission profiles into product context the team can build against.
• Educate Engineering, Design, Business Development, and Marketing on what maritime operators actually do and why it matters.
• Own Maritime Customer & Mission Discovery
• Build and maintain direct relationships with maritime operators across the Department of Defense, U.S. Coast Guard, allied navies, and commercial maritime customers.
• Run structured discovery - ride-alongs, mission debriefs, sensor log reviews, post-mission interviews - to surface real operational pain rather than feature wishlists, and maintain personas and mission-use-case libraries as the trusted voice of the customer internally.
• Shape Maritime Strategy & Roadmap
• Partner with the VP of Product to define and evolve the maritime vertical strategy and roadmap.
• Maintain a prioritized maritime epic backlog using our internal scoring framework, biased toward features that remove sensor operator tasks rather than augment them.
• Track the maritime market, programs of record, and competitive moves; bring forward signal that should change priorities.
• Author High-Quality Requirements
• Write clear product briefs, mission-use-case documents, and epic-level requirements in Confluence and Jira that capture operational realities and mission workflows.
• Hand off well-formed problems to the central Product Manager for sprint-ready decomposition; stay engaged through delivery to clarify, accept, and validate.
• Embrace AI in the Product and in How We Work
• Champion maritime applications of edge AI and autonomy in our product to compound our autonomy advantage, and use modern AI tooling actively in your own work to raise the bar for AI-augmented product practice across the team.
• Partner Across the Company
• Support Business Development on requests for information, proposals, capability briefs, and customer demos for maritime opportunities.
• Partner with Product Marketing on positioning and demo datasets, and collaborate with our designers on maritime-specific user experience flows.

What Success Looks Like:

• Maritime customers consistently say "they get us" - Overwatch is recognized as the most operator-fluent vendor in the room.
• The maritime roadmap reflects real, validated mission problems, and the wins it produces are visible in customer outcomes.
• Engineering builds maritime features against requirements that don't drift mid-sprint because operational realities were captured up front.
• BD and Sales close maritime opportunities faster because they walk in with credible, mission-grounded materials.
• The central PM has a clean, well-prioritized stream of maritime work to plan against.

What You'll Bring:

• 5+ years operating, leading, or supporting airborne maritime ISR missions - as aircrew, sensor operator, mission commander, or equivalent role - OR equivalent product experience deeply embedded with maritime ISR customers.
• Hands-on exposure to EO/IR video gimbal systems (e.g., MX-series, Star SAFIRE, EOS family) on manned or unmanned maritime patrol platforms; you have personally run a sensor over open ocean.
• Background with DoD, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, USMC, allied military, or defense contractors supporting maritime ISR.
• Strong written communication - product briefs, RFI responses, and customer-facing summaries that hold up.
• Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to set your own direction.
• Genuine enthusiasm for AI and a habit of using modern AI tools daily.

Preferred Qualifications (A Strong Plus)

• Prior service in U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, USMC, or an allied maritime air arm in an AW, NFO, MPRA, or equivalent ISR mission role.
• Experience on platforms such as P-8, MQ-9B SeaGuardian, MQ-4C, HC/MH-130, MH-60, RQ-21, ScanEagle, or Insitu Integrator.
• Familiarity with maritime C2 systems, COP feeds, AIS/SAR data fusion, and Link-16.
• Familiarity with DoD acquisition pathways (OTAs, SBIR Phase III, programs of record) or USCG R&D / acquisition channels.
• Prior product, program, or requirements experience supporting a defense-tech, GovTech, or aerospace organization.
• Experience working in agile teams alongside Product Owners and engineers.
• Familiarity with Atlassian products (JIRA, Confluence).

What We Offer:

We strive to create the best environment for the amazing people who work here, and we thrive as a team through our shared passion for our mission. Our culture encourages professional development and internal mobility, so our teammates have the opportunity to excel in a number of different disciplines to shape our future. Overwatch is a company that enables hard-working makers and doers to succeed.

• Growth Opportunities: As a team member of a true startup, you will learn by doing and shape our future. The opportunities are limitless for those who want to grow their career.
• Impact Opportunity: We work on missions that matter to keep people safe and make the world better, and we do it without bureaucracy at the speed of a startup.
• Team Collaboration: Work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment with amazing teammates. The Overwatch Imaging leadership team believes in an open-door policy, meaning everyone has a voice and access to guidance, advice, feedback, and the ability to pitch crazy new products or ideas.
• Late Start Wednesday: A weekly block to have focus time away from meetings and calls. An opportunity to work from home, flex your schedule or self-directed time to focus on training and development.
• Time Off: Generous PTO to empower employees to make decisions about work life balance based on work and home needs.
• Holidays: Overwatch Imaging recognizes 10 company holidays.
• Ownership: Equity/Stock Options in our rapidly growing company.
• Health Benefits: Medical/Dental premiums 100% covered by Overwatch Imaging for employees and their families, plus available pre-tax health savings account.
• 401K: Employer matching contributions up to 4% of pay.