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.
We are seeking a Director of Systems Engineering & Architecture (SE&A) for Shield AI’s Hivemind Enterprise organization, supporting development of our autonomy platform and development ecosystem for AI Pilots. This leader will oversee Systems Engineering, System Architecture, Cybersecurity Engineering, and Safety/Airworthiness Engineering, building the teams and technical practices needed to deliver dependable, software-intensive autonomous systems.
You will connect operational product needs to measurable requirements, coherent architectures, and credible verification and assurance evidence. Partnering with Product, Software Engineering, Program Management, and Integration and Test teams, you will embed practical engineering rigor throughout the development lifecycle.
What You'll Do:
- Lead the team: Hire, develop, and lead the SE&A engineering disciplines, establishing clear responsibilities, technical standards, and effective cross-functional partnerships.
- Establish the operating model: Define how SE&A engages with product and engineering teams, prioritizes competing demands, and allocates resources. Establish clear decision rights, escalation paths, and risk-proportionate engineering practices that improve delivery without unnecessary process overhead.
- Own requirements and architecture: Guide requirements development and management, system modeling, architectural trade studies, interface definition, traceability, and change impact analysis.
- Drive verification and validation planning: Establish system-level verification and validation strategies, measurable acceptance criteria, and evidence expectations. Partner with integration and test teams to demonstrate end-to-end capability.
- Support software development: Integrate systems engineering and architecture into iterative planning, design, implementation, testing, release readiness, and sustainment.
- Lead integrated assurance: Ensure cybersecurity, safety, and airworthiness considerations shape requirements, architecture, development, and verification from the outset.
- Guide technical decisions: Lead risk-based design reviews, resolve cross-team technical issues, and provide evidence-based readiness recommendations while preserving designated approval and risk-acceptance authorities.
- Improve engineering effectiveness: Establish and continuously improve practical methods, models, and workflows that connect requirements, architecture, implementation, and evidence. Measure success through earlier risk discovery, reduced rework, improved integration and release predictability, and timely closure of verification and assurance gaps.
What You'll Bring:
- At least 15 years of applied systems engineering experience with complex, multidisciplinary systems, including direct involvement in development, integration, verification, and delivery.
- Leadership: Demonstrated success leading engineering teams and senior technical talent, setting technical direction, and driving execution across organizational boundaries.
- Requirements engineering: Deep experience with requirements development and management, including decomposition, allocation, traceability, interface requirements, baselining, and change control.
- Architecture and modeling: Demonstrated ability to develop system architectures and use system models to analyze structure, behavior, interfaces, constraints, and design tradeoffs.
- Verification and validation: Experience defining verification methods, measurable acceptance criteria, representative validation scenarios, and the evidence needed to assess system readiness.
- Software lifecycle support: Experience applying systems engineering within software development lifecycles, including iterative development, continuous integration, testing, configuration management, and release processes.
- Engineering effectiveness: Demonstrated ability to improve engineering maturity in an iterative development environment, tailoring rigor to technical risk and achieving measurable delivery benefits rather than process adoption alone.
- Technical judgment: Ability to lead specialists across cybersecurity, safety, and airworthiness disciplines and communicate technical decisions and risks clearly to engineering, executive, and customer stakeholders.
- Autonomous systems: Experience with autonomy software, AI-enabled systems, robotics, mission systems, or autonomy development platforms and tools.
- A Degree in a relevant engineering or computer science discipline, or equivalent practical experience; an advanced technical degree is a plus
Experience That Will Help You Stand Out:
- Engineering methods: Experience applying model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and scaling engineering practices without unnecessary process overhead. Familiarity with SysML and Cameo or similar system modeling tools.
- Aerospace and defense: Experience delivering aerospace or defense systems with government customers, platform integrators, or operational users.
- Safety and airworthiness: Practical experience with safety-critical development, hazard analysis, airworthiness planning, and compliance or certification evidence.
- Applied cybersecurity: Experience translating threat assessments and security obligations into requirements, architectural controls, and verification activities.
Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
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Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.