Shield AI builds intelligent systems that protect service members and civilians. Our products include Hivemind autonomy software and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and our teams support customers and operations across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
The Forward Deployed Engineer, Operations & Sustainment is a highly technical, customer-facing role focused on deploying, supporting, and sustaining Hivemind products in real operating environments. This role bridges field deployment, customer operations, technical troubleshooting, training, and sustainment.
This is a travel-intensive role. Candidates must be willing and able to travel at least 50% of the time, including frequent domestic and international trips, customer-site work, test events, training events, and multi-week deployments as program needs require.
In this role, you will work directly with customers and internal teams to install, configure, validate, train, troubleshoot, and support Hivemind products. The role requires strong technical judgment, clear customer communication, comfort operating under field pressure, and the discipline to turn field lessons into durable support artifacts: runbooks, supported baselines, evidence packages, known-issue records, escalation paths, customer-safe updates, and product feedback.
What you'll do:
- Deploy with customers on site globally, with a minimum expectation of 50% travel, to support installation, configuration, validation, training, troubleshooting, and sustainment of Hivemind products.
- Become an expert user of the Hivemind Enterprise software stack, autonomy modules, deployment tooling, supported configurations, and diagnostic workflows.
- Execute and improve deployment runbooks covering software install, version/configuration validation, licensing or provisioning status, pre-mission checks, log readiness, and acceptance steps.
- Provide hands-on technical support to customer operators, maintainers, partners, and internal field teams during deployment, test, training, demonstration, and sustainment windows.
- Capture and organize field evidence for triage, including logs, telemetry, recorded data, screenshots, version/configuration state, asset context, operator notes, mission phase, and environmental constraints.
- Drive issues through the support flow: intake, severity assessment, ownership, workaround or fix delivery, customer-safe status, closure, and learning loop.
- Convert recurring field issues, workarounds, customer questions, and training gaps into support tickets, knowledge-base content, known-issue records, runbooks, and product feedback.
- Partner with engineering, product, program, sustainment, licensing, safety, legal, commercial, and support teams to route issues to the right owner for seamless customer support.Support root-cause investigation and corrective-action validation by reproducing issues, collecting field context, testing updates, and confirming fixes or workarounds.
- Support Field Service Representative-style obligations when required by contract, including on-site support posture, issue intake, operator assistance, troubleshooting, documentation, escalation, and evidence capture.
Projects you might work on:
- Deploying Hivemind software and autonomy capabilities during customer integration events, exercises, test campaigns, demonstrations, or operational support windows.
- Building deployment-to-sustainment handoff packages with supported baselines, configuration checklists, evidence checklists, known issues, escalation contacts, and training material.
- Standing up a repeatable support flow so field issues move from informal chats and ad hoc engineering asks into a durable support hub, severity model, owner route, and closure loop.
- Troubleshooting field behavior across software, autonomy, networking, telemetry, configuration, sensors, operator workflows, and customer environment constraints.
- Creating customer-safe documentation that helps operators and maintainers self-serve routine issues while preserving the right escalation path for mission-critical problems.
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 5+ years of experience in field engineering, forward-deployed engineering, applications engineering, systems integration, flight test, robotics support, unmanned systems operations, technical operations, customer deployment, or a similar hands-on technical role.
- Strong technical background in software engineering, systems integration, or autonomy-adjacent systems.
- Proficiency writing, reading, and debugging modern C++ code.
- Working proficiency with Python, Bash, or similar scripting for diagnostics, automation, data handling, and field support workflows.
- Strong troubleshooting skills across Linux or embedded systems, networking, configuration management, logs, telemetry, release packages, sensors or payloads, and operator workflows.
- Excellent problem-solving, communication, training, expectation-management, and escalation skills in customer-facing environments.
- Ability to write clear field notes, deployment records, troubleshooting guides, evidence packages, and support updates that engineering and support teams can act on.
- Willingness and ability to travel at least 50% of the time, including frequent domestic and international travel and multi-week deployments.
- Ability to operate professionally in lab, flight-test, range, customer-site, and field environments under time pressure.
- Ability to comply with export-control, security, safety, sensitive-data, customer-site, and mission-specific operating requirements.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with autonomy, robotics, defense aviation, unmanned aircraft, deployed defense systems, flight test, payload integration, sensors, operator systems, or edge compute environments.
- Experience supporting defense, government, allied, or international customers in operational, test, training, or overseas environments.
- Experience building or scaling a support, field-service, customer-success, sustainment, or applications-engineering function during an early product rollout.
- Experience with enterprise software deployment, customer support, licensing, provisioning, release management, configuration baselines, or offline/air-gapped operating environments.
- Hands-on experience with recorded-data analysis, diagnostic tooling, telemetry review, networking tools, system health checks, or support automation.
- FAA Part 107, military aviation or maintenance background, UAS operator experience, flight-test experience, systems engineering experience, or prior Field Service Representative experience.
- Experience using GenAI tools to accelerate troubleshooting, documentation, knowledge capture, data review, or support workflow automation.
- Active or prior security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one when required by program or customer need.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Aerospace, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years experience in field engineering, forward-deployed engineering, applications engineering, systems integration, flight test, robotics support, unmanned systems operations, or similar hands-on technical role
- Strong technical background in software engineering, systems integration, or autonomy-adjacent systems
- Proficiency writing, reading, and debugging modern C++ code
- Working proficiency with Python, Bash, or similar scripting languages
- Troubleshooting skills across Linux or embedded systems, networking, configuration management, logs, telemetry, release packages, sensors/payloads, and operator workflows
- Excellent problem-solving, communication, training, expectation-management, and escalation skills in customer-facing environments
- Ability to write clear field notes, deployment records, troubleshooting guides, evidence packages, and support updates
- Willingness and ability to travel at least 50% of the time, including frequent domestic and international travel and multi-week deployments
- Ability to operate professionally in lab, flight-test, range, customer-site, and field environments under time pressure
- Ability to comply with export-control, security, safety, sensitive-data, customer-site, and mission-specific operating requirements
- Experience with autonomy, robotics, defense aviation, unmanned aircraft, flight test, payload integration, sensors, or edge compute environments
- Experience supporting defense, government, allied, or international customers in operational, test, training, or overseas environments
- Experience building or scaling a support, field-service, customer-success, sustainment, or applications-engineering function
- Experience with enterprise software deployment, licensing, provisioning, release management, configuration baselines, or offline/air-gapped operating environments
- Hands-on experience with recorded-data analysis, diagnostic tooling, telemetry review, networking tools, system health checks, or support automation
- FAA Part 107, military aviation or maintenance background, UAS operator experience, or flight-test experience
- Experience using GenAI tools to accelerate troubleshooting, documentation, knowledge capture, or support workflow automation
- Active or prior security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one when required
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage includes medical, dental, vision, and mental-health support, with company materials describing excellent coverage. Feedback suggests these offerings are comprehensive and consistently highlighted across official and third-party benefit lists.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity is granted to all full-time hires, with RSU structures and tools like Carta Tax intended to improve understanding and tax timing. Feedback suggests this broad-based ownership approach is a notable component of total rewards.
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Parental & Family Support — Benefits include paid parental leave, fertility support, childcare benefits, family medical leave, and onsite resources such as a Mother's Room. Feedback suggests the family-oriented offerings are more expansive than basic coverage.
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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Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
