Shield AI is seeking an Infrastructure Manager to lead the team responsible for the enterprise systems and physical infrastructure supporting our engineering, manufacturing, business, and mission-critical environments. This includes compute, storage, virtualization, Windows and Linux platforms, backup and disaster recovery, core infrastructure services, PLM infrastructure, and infrastructure supporting offices, labs, manufacturing facilities, and data centers. This leader will ensure that hybrid infrastructure services remain reliable, secure, scalable, and operationally mature as Shield AI grows. Reporting to the Senior Manager of Cloud & Infrastructure, this role partners closely with Cloud Platform, Network, Cybersecurity, Facilities, Service Delivery, Enterprise Technology Solutions, and engineering teams. The ideal candidate is an experienced people leader with broad infrastructure judgment and a strong record of delivering resilient services. This position may be based in San Mateo, CA or the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area; San Diego, CA; Frisco, TX; or the Seattle-Tacoma, WA area.
What you'll do:
- Lead, coach, and develop a distributed team of infrastructure engineers and systems administrators, including specialists supporting PLM and engineering infrastructure.
- Own team capacity, resource planning, hiring priorities, workload balancing, succession planning, and development of technical leaders within the Infrastructure organization.
- Own the Infrastructure strategy, roadmap, standards, operating model, and service portfolio across on-premises, colocation, edge, lab, manufacturing, and hybrid environments.
- Oversee architecture, implementation, and operations for enterprise compute, virtualization, storage, backup, disaster recovery, Windows and Linux server platforms, and core infrastructure services.
- Provide management oversight for the infrastructure supporting Teamcenter and other mission-critical engineering platforms, partnering with application owners and vendors on reliability, capacity, upgrades, and recovery.
- Drive infrastructure modernization, automation, configuration standardization, lifecycle management, observability, and reduction of operational toil and technical debt.
- Establish priorities, project plans, service objectives, capacity forecasts, lifecycle plans, and measurable outcomes aligned with aircraft, engineering, manufacturing, and company growth.
- Ensure infrastructure services meet requirements for availability, performance, security, compliance, recoverability, and operational supportability.
- Provide management oversight for site and data-center infrastructure, including rack capacity, power and cooling, equipment lifecycle, DCIM and documentation, colocation environments, and infrastructure readiness for new facilities, expansions, relocations, and acquisitions; partner closely with Facilities and Network Engineering while maintaining clear ownership boundaries.
- Partner with Network and Cloud Platform teams on hybrid architecture, connectivity, workload placement, identity integration, and migration of shared services.
- Lead major incidents, root-cause analysis, problem management, change governance, patching and vulnerability remediation, maintenance planning, and on-call readiness.
- Manage hardware, software, licensing, support contracts, managed services, and professional-services vendors; contribute to budgets, forecasts, sourcing, and contract decisions.
- Maintain architecture, configuration, recovery, lifecycle, and operational documentation; communicate service health, project status, risks, and dependencies to technical and executive stakeholders.
Required qualifications:
- 8+ years of progressive experience in enterprise infrastructure or systems engineering, including 4+ years leading infrastructure engineers or systems administrators.
- Broad experience designing and operating enterprise compute, virtualization, storage, backup, disaster recovery, and Windows and Linux server environments.
- Strong understanding of high availability, capacity planning, performance management, patching, vulnerability remediation, monitoring, and infrastructure lifecycle management.
- Experience supporting data centers, colocation facilities, server rooms, labs, manufacturing environments, or other distributed infrastructure at enterprise scale.
- Experience leading infrastructure modernization, automation, migrations, platform upgrades, and recovery testing with limited business disruption.
- Demonstrated ability to manage production operations, incidents, changes, service health, technical debt, and geographically distributed services.
- Strong partnership skills across Facilities, Network, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Service Delivery, application teams, and business stakeholders.
- Strong people leadership skills, including hiring, coaching, performance management, delegation, and development of senior technical talent.
- Experience managing infrastructure vendors, support agreements, professional services, budgets, forecasts, and lifecycle investment planning.
- Clear written and verbal communication skills, including executive-ready status, risk, and decision communication.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Ability to travel periodically to Shield AI locations and participate in planned after-hours work or incident response as needed.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience supporting aerospace, defense, manufacturing, engineering, government contracting, or another regulated environment.
- Experience integrating infrastructure following acquisitions, site consolidations, relocations, or rapid organizational growth.
- Experience with VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, NetApp, Cohesity, Active Directory, Entra ID, infrastructure monitoring, and configuration-management tools.
- Experience supporting PLM platforms such as Siemens Teamcenter or similarly complex engineering applications and their infrastructure dependencies.
- Knowledge of CMMC, NIST 800-171, ITAR, backup immutability, disaster recovery, and controlled unclassified information environments.
- Experience with infrastructure as code, PowerShell, Python, Bash, Ansible, Terraform, or related automation practices.
- Relevant infrastructure, virtualization, cloud, security, or IT service management certifications.
Skills Required
- 8+ years of progressive experience in enterprise infrastructure or systems engineering
- 4+ years leading infrastructure engineers or systems administrators
- Experience designing and operating enterprise compute, virtualization, storage, backup, disaster recovery, Windows, and Linux environments
- Understanding of high availability, capacity planning, performance management, patching, vulnerability remediation, monitoring, and infrastructure lifecycle management
- Experience supporting data centers, colocation facilities, server rooms, labs, manufacturing environments, or distributed enterprise infrastructure
- Experience leading infrastructure modernization, automation, migrations, platform upgrades, and recovery testing
- Experience managing production operations, incidents, changes, service health, technical debt, and geographically distributed services
- Strong partnership skills across Facilities, Network, Cloud, Cybersecurity, Service Delivery, application teams, and business stakeholders
- People leadership experience including hiring, coaching, performance management, delegation, and technical talent development
- Experience managing infrastructure vendors, support agreements, professional services, budgets, forecasts, and lifecycle investment planning
- Clear written and verbal communication skills, including executive-ready status, risk, and decision communication
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
- Ability to travel periodically and participate in planned after-hours work or incident response
- Experience supporting aerospace, defense, manufacturing, engineering, government contracting, or regulated environments
- Experience integrating infrastructure following acquisitions, site consolidations, relocations, or rapid organizational growth
- Experience with VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, NetApp, Cohesity, Active Directory, Entra ID, monitoring, and configuration-management tools
- Experience supporting PLM platforms such as Siemens Teamcenter or similar engineering applications
- Knowledge of CMMC, NIST 800-171, ITAR, backup immutability, disaster recovery, and controlled unclassified information environments
- Experience with infrastructure as code, PowerShell, Python, Bash, Ansible, Terraform, or related automation practices
- Relevant infrastructure, virtualization, cloud, security, or IT service management certifications
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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Healthcare Strength — Company materials highlight comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with mental-health support and an EAP. Third-party benefits summaries also portray health coverage as a strong component of the package.
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Retirement Support — Offerings include a 401(k) with employer matching, cited on the careers page and independent benefits directories. Multiple sources indicate a match exists, though exact formulas have varied over time and warrant confirmation.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Company communications describe equity for all full-time hires and stock benefits as part of total rewards. Independent listings also note company equity/RSUs as a standard element.
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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Shield AI Teams
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Shield AI Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
