Principal Product Manager, Customs & Border Authorities
About the role
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.
Responsibilities
Own the Customs & Border Product Vision
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.
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.
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 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.
Requirements
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.
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
Experience with revenue protection (undervaluation, transshipment/COO laundering, HS misclassification) and/or enforcement missions (counternarcotics, forced labor, TBML, trade diversion)
Experience delivering products across multiple countries or agencies, including emerging-market contexts
Experience with API-based integrations, data pipeline architecture, or enterprise system implementation
Skills
Understanding of trade data structures: entry summaries, manifests, advance ship notices, HS/HTS classification, and country-of-origin determinations
Experience with graph-based analytics, AI-driven pattern detection, and product thinking
Ability to hold policy and product in your head at the same time
Experience leading teams that build, not just describe
Experience working with multiple countries or agencies, including emerging-market contexts
Experience with API-based integrations, data pipeline architecture, or enterprise system implementation
Benefits
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.
Pay
N/A
Schedule
N/A