The Quality Systems Manager is responsible for developing, implementing, maintaining, and continuously improving Shield AI's enterprise Quality Management System (QMS). This role ensures the QMS meets AS9100, applicable AQAP/NATO, customer, contractual, and regulatory requirements while supporting rapid growth across development, production, and fielded products.
This leader will drive the integration of AQAP 2110 requirements into Shield AI's existing QMS, establishing a scalable system that supports international defense customers without creating duplicative quality processes. The role partners closely with Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Program Management, Configuration Management, and Field Operations.
What you'll do:
- Own and continuously improve the enterprise QMS, ensuring compliance with AS9100 and applicable AQAP, customer, contractual, and regulatory requirements.
- Lead the assessment, gap closure, implementation, and certification readiness activities required to support AQAP 2110.
- Develop and maintain a single integrated QMS that supports multiple programs, customers, and applicable international defense requirements.
- Own the internal audit program, including audit planning, auditor qualification, findings, corrective actions, and effectiveness verification.
- Lead preparation for AS9100, AQAP, customer, government, and third-party audits and assessments.
- Own enterprise corrective action and continuous improvement processes, ensuring systemic issues are effectively identified, corrected, and prevented from recurring.
- Establish and maintain processes for document control, quality records, objective evidence, and retention.
- Partner with Engineering and Configuration Management to ensure appropriate configuration control, traceability, and as-built product records.
- Establish processes for identifying and implementing contractual and customer-specific quality requirements, including quality planning and appropriate flow-down to suppliers.
- Support Government Quality Assurance activities and serve as a key interface with customers, government representatives, and authorized quality representatives.
- Establish enterprise quality metrics and provide leadership with visibility into QMS health, compliance risks, audit performance, and systemic quality issues.
- Lead cross-functional initiatives to simplify, standardize, digitize, and improve quality processes.
- Build, develop, and lead the Quality Systems & Compliance team.
Required qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Operations, or a related technical discipline; equivalent combinations of education and significant relevant experience may be considered.
- 8+ years of progressive experience in Quality, Quality Assurance, Quality Systems, Compliance, or Product Assurance.
- 3+ years of leadership experience in Quality Systems, Quality Assurance, Compliance, or a related function.
- Demonstrated experience developing, implementing, or maintaining an AS9100 Quality Management System.
Preferred qualifications:
- Direct experience with AQAP 2110 or other NATO Allied Quality Assurance Publications.
- Experience supporting international defense customers, Government Quality Assurance, or government/customer quality representatives.
- Experience conducting QMS gap assessments and implementing compliance roadmaps.
- Experience integrating customer or regulatory requirements into an existing AS9100 QMS.
- Strong understanding of configuration management, traceability, product acceptance, and objective quality evidence.
- ASQ CMQ/OE, CQA, CQE, or equivalent professional certification.
- AS9100 or ISO Lead Auditor certification.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Operations, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent education and significant relevant experience
- 8+ years of progressive experience in Quality, Quality Assurance, Quality Systems, Compliance, or Product Assurance
- 3+ years of leadership experience in Quality Systems, Quality Assurance, Compliance, or a related function
- Experience developing, implementing, or maintaining an AS9100 Quality Management System
- Direct experience with AQAP 2110 or other NATO Allied Quality Assurance Publications
- Experience supporting international defense customers, Government Quality Assurance, or government/customer quality representatives
- Experience conducting QMS gap assessments and implementing compliance roadmaps
- Experience integrating customer or regulatory requirements into an existing AS9100 QMS
- Strong understanding of configuration management, traceability, product acceptance, and objective quality evidence
- ASQ CMQ/OE, CQA, CQE, or equivalent professional certification
- AS9100 or ISO Lead Auditor certification
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Gallery
%203.jpg)
Shield AI Teams
.jpg)
Shield AI Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
