The Configuration and Change Control Manager is a senior individual contributor responsible for owning configuration discipline for the fielded V-BAT fleet, including aircraft, payloads, software, ground equipment, support equipment, and customer-specific configurations.
This role ensures Shield AI maintains an accurate, traceable, and controlled understanding of what hardware, software, payload, and ground system configurations are deployed, which changes apply to which aircraft or customers, and how approved fixes, retrofits, releases, and service actions are controlled through execution.
This position is critical to preventing configuration confusion across aircraft serial numbers, hardware revisions, software versions, payload variants, ground equipment configurations, fielded modifications, maintenance releases, and customer-specific baselines. The Configuration and Change Control Manager partners closely with Fleet Support, Sustainment Engineering, Product Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, Customer Success, Operations, and Configuration Management to ensure changes are documented, approved, communicated, traceable, and deployed to the correct assets.
The role requires strong process discipline, technical fluency, attention to detail, and the ability to drive cross-functional accountability without direct authority.
What you'll do:
- Own and maintain the V-BAT fielded and as-maintained configuration baseline for aircraft, payloads, software, ground equipment, support equipment, and related sustainment assets.
- Track aircraft serial numbers, hardware revisions, software versions, payload configurations, ground system configurations, fielded modifications, retrofit status, and customer-specific baselines.
- Manage the change control process for fielded V-BAT systems, ensuring approved changes are controlled, traceable, and applied to the correct aircraft, customers, and configurations.
- Support Engineering Change Requests, Engineering Change Orders, change impact assessments, release readiness reviews, retrofit plans, and service action planning.
- Ensure fielded fixes, retrofits, software updates, hardware changes, payload changes, and service actions are tied to the correct serial numbers, configurations, customers, and effectivity ranges.
- Maintain configuration records for deployed aircraft, spares, payloads, ground equipment, support equipment, and field-modified assets.
- Partner with Fleet Support, Sustainment Engineering, Product Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, Customer Success, Operations, and Configuration Management to control changes across the V-BAT fleet.
- Support release readiness reviews for software, hardware, payload, ground system, maintenance, and support equipment updates.
- Ensure changes are documented, approved, communicated, implemented, and traceable from engineering approval through field deployment.
- Maintain a clear view of which customers, aircraft, payloads, ground systems, spares, and support equipment are affected by each change.
- Define and maintain change effectivity logic, including serial number applicability, build applicability, customer applicability, configuration applicability, and retrofit applicability.
- Coordinate with Product Engineering and Sustainment Engineering to understand technical change intent, required implementation steps, and field impact.
- Coordinate with Fleet Support and Customer Success to ensure field teams understand which updates, inspections, retrofits, or service actions apply to each customer asset.
- Coordinate with Manufacturing, Quality, and Supply Chain to ensure production records, nonconformance records, part revisions, supplier changes, and field configurations remain aligned.
- Identify configuration gaps, data inconsistencies, undocumented modifications, incomplete retrofit records, and risks to fielded fleet traceability.
- Escalate configuration risks that could affect fleet readiness, customer support, release execution, repair decisions, or technical troubleshooting.
- Support audits, reviews, and investigations requiring accurate configuration history, change history, serial number traceability, or fielded asset applicability.
- Improve configuration management processes, change control mechanisms, release tracking, field modification tracking, and reporting tools as the sustainment function scales.
- Provide leadership updates on configuration health, change control status, open risks, affected assets, and field deployment progress.
Required qualifications:
- 6+ years of experience in configuration management, change control, aviation sustainment, hardware/software product support, manufacturing operations, product lifecycle management, engineering operations, or complex hardware sustainment.
- Demonstrated experience managing configuration baselines, revision control, change effectivity, fielded asset records, engineering change processes, or product release control in a complex technical environment.
- Strong understanding of configuration baselines, as-built records, as-maintained records, revision control, serial number traceability, effectivity management, and engineering change control.
- Experience supporting Engineering Change Requests, Engineering Change Orders, release readiness reviews, retrofit planning, service actions, or fielded product updates.
- Experience tracking or managing hardware revisions, software versions, payload configurations, ground equipment configurations, customer-specific configurations, or deployed asset baselines.
- Ability to determine which aircraft, systems, customers, configurations, or serial numbers are affected by a given change, issue, release, retrofit, or service action.
- Experience working across Product Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, Fleet Support, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, Operations, Customer Success, and Configuration Management teams.
- Strong technical fluency with bills of material, part revisions, drawings, software releases, hardware changes, configuration records, product structures, or fielded system documentation.
- Strong process discipline and attention to detail, with the ability to maintain accurate records across multiple systems, stakeholders, and changing priorities.
- Ability to identify configuration risks, traceability gaps, undocumented changes, incomplete records, and process breakdowns before they affect fleet readiness or customer support.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly communicate change applicability, implementation status, configuration risks, and decision needs.
- Ability to operate independently as a senior IC and drive cross-functional accountability without direct authority.
- Ability to balance configuration rigor with field support urgency, release timelines, customer needs, and operational realities.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with aviation, defense, unmanned systems, robotics, aerospace manufacturing, complex hardware/software products, or deployed technical systems.
- Familiarity with PLM, ERP, MES, CMMS, service management systems, requirements systems, software release systems, or configuration management databases.
- Experience with aircraft serial number tracking, software release management, payload configuration management, ground system configuration, depot repair records, or field modification tracking.
- Experience with ECO/ECR processes, MRB, FRACAS, RCCA, service bulletins, maintenance releases, retrofit campaigns, or fleet-wide service actions.
- Familiarity with configuration audits, physical configuration audits, functional configuration audits, controlled baselines, product structures, or digital thread concepts.
- Experience supporting military, defense, aviation, or high-reliability customer environments where configuration accuracy affects safety, readiness, supportability, or contractual commitments.
- Experience working in a startup, high-growth, defense technology, aerospace, robotics, or advanced manufacturing environment.
- CM2, CMII, PMP, Lean Six Sigma, APICS, aviation maintenance, systems engineering, or related certification preferred but not required.
Skills Required
- 6+ years experience in configuration management, change control, aviation sustainment, hardware/software product support, manufacturing operations, PLM, or complex hardware sustainment
- Demonstrated experience managing configuration baselines, revision control, change effectivity, fielded asset records, or product release control
- Strong understanding of configuration baselines, as-built/as-maintained records, revision control, serial number traceability, and effectivity management
- Experience supporting Engineering Change Requests (ECR), Engineering Change Orders (ECO), release readiness reviews, retrofit planning, or service actions
- Experience tracking/managing hardware revisions, software versions, payload configurations, ground equipment configurations, or deployed asset baselines
- Ability to determine which aircraft, systems, customers, configurations, or serial numbers are affected by a given change or service action
- Experience working across Product Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, Fleet Support, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, Operations, Customer Success, and CM teams
- Strong technical fluency with bills of material, part revisions, drawings, software releases, product structures, and fielded system documentation
- Strong process discipline and attention to detail to maintain accurate records across multiple systems and stakeholders
- Ability to identify configuration risks, traceability gaps, undocumented changes, and incomplete records prior to impacting readiness or support
- Strong written and verbal communication skills to convey change applicability, implementation status, risks, and decision needs
- Ability to operate independently as a senior individual contributor and drive cross-functional accountability without direct authority
- Ability to balance configuration rigor with field support urgency, release timelines, customer needs, and operational realities
- Experience with aviation, defense, unmanned systems, robotics, aerospace manufacturing, or deployed technical systems
- Familiarity with PLM, ERP, MES, CMMS, service management systems, requirements systems, software release systems, or configuration management databases
- Experience with ECO/ECR processes, MRB, FRACAS, RCCA, service bulletins, maintenance releases, retrofit campaigns, or fleet-wide service actions
- Familiarity with configuration audits, physical/functional configuration audits, controlled baselines, product structures, or digital thread concepts
- Experience supporting military, defense, aviation, or high-reliability customer environments
- Experience in startup, high-growth, defense technology, aerospace, robotics, or advanced manufacturing environments
- Relevant certifications (CM2, CMII, PMP, Lean Six Sigma, APICS, aviation maintenance, or systems engineering)
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage is described as excellent, with dental/vision and mental‑health support, and ancillary protections like life and disability appearing in benefit summaries. The breadth and perceived affordability of coverage are highlighted as a standout component of the package.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is featured alongside enhanced maternity benefits, fertility and childcare support, and onsite resources such as a Mother’s Room. These elements are positioned as competitive and above the minimal baseline for the company’s stage.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity is granted to all full‑time hires, with RSUs, double‑trigger tax timing, and tools to model scenarios (e.g., through Carta Tax). Communications also reference a transition from options to RSUs, reinforcing access and maturity of ownership programs.
Shield AI Insights
What We Do
At Shield AI, you won't wait years to see your work reach the field. You'll build hardware and software that operates in the real world right now, in the hands of the people who depend on it. Hivemind, our AI pilot, has been flying since 2018. It has flown more than 30 platforms, including an F-16, and it now sits under a U.S. Air Force production contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft. When you write code or shape a system here, you contribute to technology with a proven flight record and a clear production future. V-BAT flies intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions with an operational record that stretches from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific. It delivers eyes where they matter most, in the most demanding conditions on earth. The teams behind it watch their work get tested where the stakes are real. X-BAT takes its first flight this year. It's an AI-piloted fighter that needs no runway, built to operate where traditional aircraft can't. Join now and you help shape a program at its earliest, most formative stage. That's the kind of ground-floor work that defines a career. Do the most impactful work of your life, on problems that matter. Autonomy at this level asks a lot of you. You'll take on problems in perception, planning, and control that few teams anywhere are equipped to solve. You'll work across disciplines, from aerospace and robotics to machine learning and systems engineering, alongside people who hold themselves to an exacting standard and expect the same from you. Our mission is clear: protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. That purpose runs through every decision, every design review, and every deployment. It's why the work here carries a weight you can feel. Ready to join our mission? Explore our open roles and find where you fit.
Why Work With Us
Founded in 2015 by a former Navy SEAL, Shield AI builds AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft. Veterans aren't an afterthought here, they're at every level. It's why the work carries weight: AI pilots and uncrewed aircraft flying real missions, from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific, protecting service members and civilians.
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