Hivemind is looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our Shared Services Engineering team.
The Shared Services team is a product-oriented, full-stack engineering team that builds and operates common services, SDKs, APIs, and customer-facing applications connecting Shield’s products. These capabilities reduce duplicated engineering and help create a consistent Shield experience across product types.
You will lead the team as it identifies shared needs, establishes ownership, and delivers reliable, secure, and well-supported solutions. You will treat the team’s capabilities as products, maintaining a roadmap informed by external customers and internal engineering teams.
This is a technical, hands-on management role. You will guide architecture and delivery, remain engaged in complex engineering decisions, and build a team that owns its systems from design through production operation.
What you'll do:
- Build and lead the Shared Services Engineering team, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development
- Define and execute the team’s roadmap, balancing customer needs, cross-product priorities, operational health, and long-term technical investment
- Partner with product and engineering teams to identify shared capabilities, establish ownership and integration boundaries, and guide initiatives including shared authentication, telemetry integrations, the Customer Support Portal, and future public telemetry APIs
- Lead the architecture, delivery, and operation of shared services, SDKs, APIs, and customer-facing systems
- Establish secure, reliable, documented, and versioned interfaces for internal engineering teams and external customers
- Communicate plans, progress, risks, and tradeoffs across engineering, product, and organizational leadership
Required qualifications:
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, including experience managing engineers responsible for production software
- Demonstrated technical judgment in the design and operation of full-stack applications, backend services, APIs, or distributed systems
- Strategic systems thinking and the ability to turn recurring needs across products into coherent, reusable capabilities
- Track record of setting technical direction, making thoughtful tradeoffs, and executing across immediate and long-term priorities
- Effective cross-functional leadership, with the ability to build alignment and trusted partnerships across engineering, product, and organizational stakeholders
Preferred qualifications:
- Track record of leading teams that build shared services and customer-facing applications from scratch and own them through production operation
- Depth in one or more relevant domains, such as identity and authentication, public APIs and SDKs, or OpenTelemetry and high-volume telemetry data
- Experience establishing a new engineering capability, consolidating fragmented ownership, or driving adoption across multiple product teams
- Experience building and operating secure, reliable software in regulated or compliance-driven environments
Skills Required
- 7+ years of software engineering experience
- Experience managing engineers responsible for production software
- Technical judgment in designing and operating full-stack applications, backend services, APIs, or distributed systems
- Strategic systems thinking and ability to develop reusable capabilities from recurring cross-product needs
- Experience setting technical direction, making tradeoffs, and executing across short- and long-term priorities
- Cross-functional leadership and ability to build alignment across engineering, product, and organizational stakeholders
- Experience leading teams that build shared services and customer-facing applications from inception through production
- Expertise in identity and authentication, public APIs and SDKs, or OpenTelemetry and high-volume telemetry data
- Experience establishing new engineering capabilities, consolidating fragmented ownership, or driving adoption across product teams
- Experience building and operating secure, reliable software in regulated or compliance-driven environments
What the Team is Saying
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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Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
