Job Description:
Shield AI is seeking a Manager, Global Real Estate to lead portfolio strategy, site selection, transactions, lease administration, occupancy planning, and portfolio analytics across a rapidly growing global footprint. This role will create the disciplined portfolio-management capability required to align physical infrastructure with business growth, workforce demand, financial stewardship, and operational readiness.
This is a hands-on role for a commercially astute leader who can move from long-range portfolio strategy to transaction execution and detailed lease or occupancy analysis. The successful candidate will build a reliable global portfolio fact base, lead external advisors, translate ambiguous business demand into clear real estate recommendations, and guide decisions that create long-term financial and operational commitments.
What you'll do:
PORTFOLIO STRATEGY AND DEMAND PLANNING
- Own and maintain the global real estate portfolio strategy, including location, capacity, tenure, timing, and scenario recommendations.
- Partner with business leaders, Px, Finance, Manufacturing, Engineering, Security, EH&S, and Facilities Operations to understand growth plans, workforce demand, operating requirements, and risk.
- Translate business scenarios into multi-year portfolio plans, decision points, options, dependencies, and financial implications.
- Identify opportunities to expand, renew, consolidate, relocate, or exit space before constraints become business-critical.
SITE SELECTION, TRANSACTIONS, AND BROKER MANAGEMENT
- Lead site selection, market evaluation, option development, and real estate transaction strategy for new and existing locations.
- Direct brokers, market advisors, landlords, and other external partners through clear scopes, timelines, deliverables, and performance expectations.
- Structure and negotiate leases, renewals, expansions, contractions, assignments, subleases, and exits in partnership with Legal, Finance, Procurement, and executive approvers.
- Coordinate business cases, due diligence, approvals, negotiation positions, and transaction documentation while maintaining a clear audit trail of decisions and commitments.
LEASE ADMINISTRATION AND PORTFOLIO CONTROLS
- Establish and maintain a single authoritative inventory of sites, leases, owned assets, critical dates, obligations, rights, options, and landlord responsibilities.
- Implement disciplined lease administration, critical-date management, notice processes, obligation tracking, and escalation controls.
- Partner with Finance and Legal to validate occupancy costs, rent and operating-expense obligations, forecasts, accruals, and transaction assumptions.
- Drive timely resolution of landlord, lease, and occupancy issues while preserving clear ownership between Real Estate and Facilities Operations.
OCCUPANCY, SPACE PLANNING, AND PORTFOLIO ANALYTICS
- Establish common occupancy-planning methods, demand inputs, capacity assumptions, space standards, and scenario models.
- Maintain a current view of capacity, utilization, vacancy, constraints, lease events, cost, and portfolio risk across the global footprint.
- Develop location and space scenarios that balance business speed, employee experience, operational requirements, flexibility, cost, and risk.
- Create concise portfolio dashboards and decision materials for monthly reviews, annual planning, and major site or transaction approvals.
LIFECYCLE INTEGRATION AND EXECUTIVE ADVISORY
- Serve as the principal real estate advisor to the Global Facilities Leader and a trusted business partner to senior stakeholders.
- Coordinate with Capital Delivery to translate an approved transaction into a funded project, while preserving Capital Delivery ownership from authorization through occupancy.
- Engage Facilities Operations, EH&S, Security, IT, Manufacturing, and other stakeholders early enough that operating and compliance requirements inform site and transaction decisions.
- Contribute the portfolio fact base, real estate risks, and decision materials required for enterprise governance without assuming ownership of the broader Facilities PMO.
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience in corporate real estate, business, finance, economics, planning, facilities, project management, or a related field.
- 6+ years of progressive experience in corporate real estate, portfolio strategy, transactions, occupancy planning, workplace strategy, lease administration, or a comparable function.
- Demonstrated experience supporting a multi-site portfolio and translating business demand into real estate strategies, options, and executive recommendations.
- Practical experience with site selection, lease transactions, broker management, commercial negotiations, due diligence, or lease administration.
- Strong business and financial acumen, including occupancy-cost analysis, scenario modeling, business cases, budgeting, forecasting, and trade-off evaluation.
- Ability to synthesize incomplete and sometimes conflicting inputs into concise, fact-based recommendations and decision materials.
- Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and coordinate Finance, Legal, Px, Procurement, Facilities, Capital, Security, EH&S, and business partners without relying on formal authority.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, sound judgment, high discretion, and the ability to operate independently in a fast-changing environment.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience in aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing, technology, or another high-growth and regulated environment.
- Experience with international portfolios, multi-country transactions, or global real estate business partnering.
- Experience supporting manufacturing, engineering, hangar, laboratory, classified, SCIF, or other technically complex environments.
- Familiarity with IWMS, lease-administration, occupancy-planning, mapping, financial-modeling, and business-intelligence tools.
- Real estate, finance, project-management, workplace, or related professional credential.
- Experience building a new real estate capability, leading external advisors, or developing analysts and cross-functional workstreams.