Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide.
For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
What You'll Do:
Technical Strategy & Portfolio Leadership
- Define and drive the long-term technical direction for Expeditionary autonomy across V-BAT, X-BAT, and future platforms. Develop & Field Autonomy
- Guide development of mission autonomy, payload integration, flight-autonomy interfaces, executive autonomy, and multi-agent capabilities while ensuring successful operational deployment. Aircraft Team Partnership
- Establish long-term technical strategy with the Aircraft team for platform integration, interface evolution, and mission readiness. Cross-Engineering Leadershi p
- Influence architecture across the Autonomy Capabilities, Perception, GCS, Strategic Systems (ACP), Aircraft, and customer organizations. Subject Matter Expertise
- Serve as the organization's technical expert for complex autonomy integration challenges spanning software, hardware, and operations. Design & Engineering Excellence
- Lead architecture reviews, engineering standards, interface definitions, and organization-wide technical improvements. Mentorship & Organizational Growth
- Mentor senior engineers, develop technical leaders, contribute to leveling frameworks, and partner on senior hiring. Mission Readiness & Operational Excellence
- Guide customer releases, deployment strategy, and mission validation while supporting critical operational events. Continuous Improvement
- Drive long-term improvements to engineering processes, integration workflows, testing infrastructure, and developer experience. C2 Interoperability & Open Systems
- Define technical strategy for command-and-control interoperability and adoption of open-systems standards. Hiring & Developing Technical Talent
- Define the technical hiring bar for senior engineering roles, partner with engineering managers on long-term staffing strategy, and help grow the organization's technical capabilities. Travel Requirement
- Members of this team typically travel around 10–20% of the year to different office locations, customer sites, operator training events, flight tests, and integration exercises.
Required Qualifications:
- BS/MS in a relevant engineering discipline or equivalent experience.
- 10+ years of relevant experience.
- Expert-level C++ and Linux systems development experience.
- Demonstrated experience defining technical strategy across multiple engineering teams or programs.
- Proven track record influencing architecture and solving highly complex systems integration challenges.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving engineering excellence.
- Ability to obtain a SECRET clearance.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Extensive experience with Group 3 UAS, VTOL platforms, or comparable autonomous systems.
- Experience defining flight-autonomy interfaces or custom autopilot integrations.
- Experience deploying autonomy to operational military systems.
- Experience with international defense customers.
- Experience with STANAG 4586, UCI, OMS, and open-systems architectures.
- Experience shaping engineering practices across an organization.