VP Product Line Leader, Global Safety Communications & Services

## About us At Viasat, the work you do helps people stay connected in ways that matter, from everyday moments to critical missions across air, land, sea, and space. We’re a place for people who are curious, bold, and motivated by meaningful work. Here, you'll have the opportunity to make an impact, explore new possibilities, and grow your career in ways that align with your interests and goals.

When you're ready to take on something new, you'll find leaders who support your development and help you turn your ambition into action. ## What you'll do Run this like your own startup. Own the vision. Drive the roadmap. Build the team. Win the customers. Shape the category. The infrastructure, global reach and existing partner eco-system are yours to leverage - the rest is yours to build!

This is a founder-level role inside a company with global reach. The Product Line Leader for Global Safety Communications & Services is charged with building a new business - from vision to execution - within the structure of an established organization and leveraging its shared NTN (Non-Terrestrial Network) infrastructure across satellite, ground, and user terminal layers.

The goal: b uilding on our foundation as a leading provider of safety communications services across aviation, maritime, and land/edge services to lead the next generation of safety communication services in all verticals.

The role carries the full weight of a product-line CEO: setting the 5–10 year vision, driving the hardware, software, and platform roadmap, owning a team spanning product, sales, business development, and account management, and ultimately building a profitable, recurring-revenue business. This is not a coordination role - it is a building role, with accountability for outcomes.

The successful candidate can be based in either of these amazing office locations: Carlsbad, CA or London, UK ## Vision, Strategy & Roadmap Ownership - Define and own the 5–10 year product vision and market strategy for safety communications services across all three domains, aviation, maritime, and land/edge, with a clear line of sight to where these markets will be, not where they are today. - Set the annual and multi-year product roadmap, identifying the HW (user terminal), SW (platform, applications), and service (SLA, certification, compliance) building blocks required to win each market vertical. - Work through the organizations shared platform product team to specify and prioritize the NTN platform capabilities required to support safety-grade services acting as the strategic customer of the team. - Identify emerging market opportunities in advance: air traffic management, urban air mobility safety infrastructure, AI-driven distress signal processing, hybrid satellite/terrestrial safety layers for developing markets, and beyond. - Build the intellectual and competitive framework that positions our NTN platform as the natural architectural choice for every safety communications application across domains. ## Full Product Line P&L Accountability - Own the future product line P&L: revenue, gross margin, bookings, subscription ARR, and customer satisfaction (NPS) targets across aviation, maritime, and land verticals. - Lead market pricing strategy in close alignment with the commercial strategy lead, including managed service / SaaS, hardware + subscription, and contract structures that maximize long-term value while enabling market penetration. - Build annual operating plans, multi-year financial models, and investment cases for new product initiatives, securing alignment and funding from executive leadership. - Drive the path to profitability with discipline: prioritize investments that build durable competitive moats, manage cost of delivery, and scale recurring revenue as the core business metric. ## Team Leadership - Building the Business Unit - Build, lead, and develop a cross-functional team of Product Managers, Business Development, Account Managers, Solutions Architects, Sales specialists, and Regulatory Affairs experts, operating as an integrated product-line business unit. - Set a culture of customer obsession, curiosity, ownership, a team that operates like a startup but leverages enterprise-scale infrastructure and global reach. - Partner with Marketing to establish the brand identity, thought leadership positioning, content strategy, and customer communications for the product line, including industry conference presence, white papers, and regulatory engagement materials. - Drive talent development: identify capability gaps, recruit specialized expertise (domain specialists, regulatory specialists, enterprise sales), and build a team that can grow with the business. ## Customer Engagement, Migration Strategy & Ecosystem Management - Lead & Parter to engage with the existing installed base, 10,000+ commercial aircraft and 130,000+ ships, to understand current service dependencies, migration readiness, and upgrade appetite. - Design and co-own the migration strategy: how existing customers with existing HW and active subscriptions transition to next-generation platforms without service disruption, and how the business bridges the revenue transition from existing to next-gen product lines. - Coordinate closely with the current P&L business leader responsible for existing services, aligning on timing, customer communications, and transition economics so the migration is an ecosystem event, not a rip-and-replace disruption. - Manage vendor and partner ecosystem relationships, avionics integrators, ship equipment manufacturers, airframe OEMs, defense primes, and satellite distribution partners, to ensure ecosystem readiness for next-generation product deployment. ## Regulatory Strategy & Standards Shaping - Develop deep fluency in the regulatory environments governing all three domains: ICAO SARPs and NextGen/SESAR frameworks, IMO GMDSS Modernization and IMSO governance, FAA/EASA certification requirements, ITU spectrum regulations, and applicable national aviation/maritime authorities. - Engage team proactively in standards bodies, ICAO working groups, IMO/IMSO committees, RTCA SC-228/SC-230, EUROCAE, ITU-R Study Groups as a contributor shaping standards rather than a respondent to them. - Translate regulatory timelines and mandate windows into strategic product milestones: identify where regulatory change creates market pull (e.g., GMDSS Modernization Phase 2, BVLOS UAS rulemaking, CPDLC mandate expansion) and time product launches accordingly. - Build and maintain regulatory risk maps for each vertical, ensuring that product certification and compliance strategies are integrated into the roadmap from day one. ## Go-to-Market Strategy & Revenue Execution - Develop domain-specific GTM strategies and playbooks for each vertical from airline fleet operators and maritime fleet managers to defense acquisition offices and emergency management agencies, tailored to buying cycles, procurement structures, and decision-maker profiles. - Lead strategic pursuit of landmark customer wins that establish market presence and create reference cases: flagship carrier airlines, top 10 container shipping operators, national coast guard agencies, partner with our defense teams on major defense programs. - Drive the full commercial cycle from market development and pipeline building through proposal, negotiation, and contract close working in close partnership with the sales and BD team. - Build category-defining marketing and branding for the product line: positioning, messaging, competitive differentiation, and the narrative that makes our safety services platform the default choice across domains. - Establish customer advisory boards for each domain to create structured feedback loops between customers and the product roadmap and to build advocates who influence industry peers. ## Experience & Track Record - 12–20 years of progressive experience in product management, strategy, or business dev