Principal Product Manager, Customs & Border Authorities at altanaai | AI Job Board

Job description

Altana is the network for trusted trade. Our AI-powered product network empowers governments and businesses to build a more resilient and secure global economy while keeping trade flowing.

The Opportunity

The rules of global trade are being rewritten in real time.

Supply chain transparency requirements, forced labor enforcement, fentanyl and precursor interdiction, tariff volatility, revenue leakage, and the pressure to facilitate ever-growing trade volumes with flat resources — customs and border authorities around the world are being asked to do something they’ve never been equipped to do: understand, monitor, and act on the full depth of global commerce, not just the edge of it. The manifest at the dock. The entry summary at the border. The invoice that says one thing while the supply chain says another.

The tools haven’t kept pace with the mandate. Border agencies still rely on paper-based trusted-trader audits, rule-matching targeting systems that can’t see the network, and data infrastructure designed for a simpler era of trade. The result is a widening gap between what authorities need to know and what they can actually see — a gap that bad actors exploit, that allied agencies can’t easily close together, and that legitimate traders pay for in delays, uncertainty, and compliance overhead.

Altana exists to close that gap.

As Principal Product Manager for Customs & Border Authorities, you will lead the team defining how customs, border, and revenue agencies — in many developed and emerging countries — harness the power of the Altana network to build safer, more efficient, and more collaborative trade workflows. You will own the product vision across Altana’s core customs offerings: the Altana Passport Manager, which lets authorities pre-clear goods before they ever arrive; the Altana Entry Processing System, which brings sophisticated AI to entry review at the speed and scale of live trade; and the Altana Trade Enforcement Suite, which powers enforcement and revenue protection from counternarcotics to undervaluation.

You’ve worked at the intersection of trade, customs enforcement, and government operations. You understand how targeting and clearance decisions get made, how border agencies operate, and why the data authorities actually need almost never arrives in the format they need it. Now you’re ready to build the system that changes that — for agencies operating under very different mandates, legal regimes, and levels of digital maturity.

This role sits at the center of one of the most consequential technology problems in the world. The team you lead will define how Altana becomes the operating infrastructure for trusted trade at the border — the platform authorities reach for when they need to know not just what crossed a border, but why it matters.

What You’ll Do

Own the Customs & Border Product Vision

Own the product vision for how Altana is deployed to customs, border, and revenue authorities — meeting each agency where it is across varied geographies, legal regimes, sovereignty requirements, and levels of digital maturity.
Unify our platform and architecture so a single core capability set can serve many governments while honoring each authority’s sovereign control over its own data and business logic.
Shape how authorities collaborate — within an agency, across agencies, and with trusted trading partners abroad — to build safer, more efficient, and more collaborative trade workflows.
Partner closely with Altana’s enterprise product areas so that what traders submit and what authorities receive tells one coherent, trusted story.

Pre-Clear Goods Before They Arrive — Altana Passport Manager

Own the product vision for the Altana Passport Manager, which lets border authorities review product passports and apply their own sovereign business logic — powered by Altana’s robust data, ML models, and AI — to pre-clear goods before they ever reach the border.
Move authorities beyond paper-based trusted-trader programs toward real-time, data-driven pre-clearance that scales with global trade volumes.
Build the tooling that lets each authority encode, test, and govern its own rules and risk logic on top of Altana’s network intelligence — without writing code and without ceding control of its data.

Modernize Entry Processing at the Speed of Trade — Altana Entry Processing System

Own the Altana Entry Processing System, which integrates with and augments an agency’s existing targeting systems to deliver AI-driven entry review on streaming entries — applying Altana’s most sophisticated AI and ML while meeting the low-latency demands of live trade.
Own the integration layer: high-volume REST APIs, EDI pipelines, and configurable connections to customs management and targeting systems that make Altana feel like a native capability, not another integration project.
Ensure the system augments rather than rips out — earning trust by improving the targeting and workflows agencies already depend on.

Sharpen Enforcement & Revenue Protection — Altana Trade Enforcement Suite

Own the Altana Trade Enforcement Suite, giving customs, border, and revenue agencies the ability to screen for the full spectrum of enforcement and revenue threats, including:

Enforcement: counternarcotics, forced labor, trade-based money laundering, and trade diversion.
Revenue: undervaluation, illegal transshipment and country-of-origin (COO) laundering, and HS misclassification.

Move agencies beyond simple rule-matching to AI-driven, network-aware targeting — surfacing shell companies, obfuscated ownership, and anomalous trade routes that indicate evasion, illicit trade, or sanctions circumvention.
Deliver a suite of customizable targeting models that each border authority can tailor to its own priorities, threat picture, and legal authorities.
Design the investigator-facing workflows officers use to review high-risk shipments, gather evidence, collaborate across teams and agencies, and build cases that hold up.

Lead a High-Impact Product Team

Set the product strategy and roadmap across pre-clearance, entry processing, and enforcement — balancing near-term agency impact against the long-term platform bets that matter most.
Partner closely with engineering, design, data science, and government affairs and our private sector product and engineering teams to translate policy mandates and operational realities into product capabilities that work at the scale and latency border agencies require.
Build a culture of “show, don’t tell” — a team that defines system interfaces, drafts API specs, and prototypes workflows before production code is written, and that ships things that work in the real world.

Who You Are

You understand how customs and border authorities actually work. You’ve spent 8+ years at the intersection of trade, customs enforcement, or border security technology — understanding the operational constraints, the data limitations, and the political realities from the inside. You know the difference between a manifest and an entry summary. You’ve seen how targeting and clearance decisions get made, and you understand why the systems that support them weren’t built for what’s being asked of them today.

You think in networks, not transactions. You understand that trade is inherently a network system — and that the most consequential risks (evasion, illicit finance, undervaluation, COO laundering, supply chain manipulation) hide in the connections, not the individual records. You’re energized by graph-based analytics, AI-driven pattern detection, and the opportunity to give border officers a view of global commerce that’s never existed before.

You can hold policy and product in your head at the same time. You’ve translated high-level mandates — forced labor enforcement, counternarcotics, trusted-trader modernization, revenue protection — into concrete product features. You know how to write a requirement an engineer can build, and how to explain a data architecture to a customs official who has never written a line of code.

You build for many authorities, not one. You’re comfortable designing for agencies across developed and emerging economies — with different legal regimes, data-sovereignty requirements, languages, and levels of digital maturity — and finding the common platform beneath the local variation.

You lead teams that build, not just describe. Your team defines system interfaces, drafts API specs, and prototypes workflows before production code is written. You hold yourself and your team to shipping things that work in the real world.

You’re tech-enabled and obsessed with UX. You understand the plumbing — APIs, EDI, ETL/ELT, JSON — but you’re equally obsessed with the user experience. You hate clunky integration projects. You believe that even the most complex border workflows can be made to feel like magic with the right product thinking.

Clearance is a plus, but not required. Some of our government work requires eligibility for a security clearance; eligibility for (or an existing) U.S. security clearance, or a prior successful Customs and Border Protection/DHS background investigation, is a strong plus. For engagements with international customs authorities, relevant local eligibility and the ability to work within each authority’s security requirements is what matters most.

Preferred Qualifications

8+ years of experience in customs enforcement, border security technology, trade compliance, or trade facilitation
7+ years of product management experience, ideally spanning complex enterprise or government systems
Direct experience with customs agency operations, trusted-trader/pre-clearance programs, or trade facilitation modernization initiatives — in the U.S. or internationally
Familiarity with targeting systems, risk scoring, and enforcement workflow design in a customs, border, or law enforcement context
Working knowledge of trade data structures: entry summaries, manifests, advance ship notices, HS/HTS classification, and country-of-origin determinations
Experience with revenue protection (undervaluation, transshipment/COO laundering, HS misclassification) and/or enforcement missions (counternarcotics, forced labor, TBML, trade diversion) is a strong plus
Experience delivering products across multiple countries or agencies, including emerging-market contexts, is a plus
Prior experience with API-based integrations, data pipeline architecture, or enterprise system implementation
Eligibility for a U.S. security clearance, or an existing clearance / CBP background investigation, is a plus (see flagged note above)

Our Values

Our values are the core beliefs that shape who we are, what we stand for, and how we behave.They form the foundation of Altana’s culture and integrity and guide how we hire, design, build, and connect with each other and our customers.

Trust: Our customers and partners entrust us with missions of the highest importance. We honor that by keeping our word, meeting commitments, and ensuring every action we take reinforces confidence in us. We rely on each other to deliver, to speak openly, and to hold ourselves accountable.
Resilience: In a world of uncertainty and complexity, our work must withstand challenges, evolve with conditions, and ensure reliability over time. Resilience is both how we operate and what we deliver. It’s how we respond when things don’t go to plan –– we adapt, we support each other, and we keep moving forward.
Stewardship: We are stewards of every mission we touch. Because our work impacts lives and futures, we hold ourselves accountable to delivering mission impact and never compromising. Our responsibility extends beyond individual projects to the broader system of global trade. We believe that stewardship starts from within so that we can bring focus, creativity, and excellence to our work. Each of us is personally responsible for fostering a workplace where people can thrive. And we are stewards of the greater good of the company. By holding ourselves and each other accountable, we build a culture of innovation and collective success that reflects the scale of our mission.
Courage: Courage is what unlocks the seemingly impossible for our customers. It’s the core value that drives us make bold moves and take on big, complicated network problems—the ones others avoid. We know success isn't guaranteed, but we have the audacious vision to believe a solution is possible and to build it. Courage fuels our growth mindset. It means embracing challenges that make us stronger, and it’s demonstrated by how we approach hard conversations and complex projects.

At Altana, we believe that a diverse workforce enables greater creativity, performance, and adaptability. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and welcome you to join us as you are. Our employment opportunities and decisions are based on business needs and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, family care or medical leave status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by the laws or regulations in the areas in which we operate. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type, in any situation.

Offers related to employment at Altana will come from an Altana.ai email address. We will never ask for payment as part of the interview or onboarding process.