Job Descritpion:
Shield AI is seeking a Mission Assurance Lead to provide independent, engineering‑informed oversight of maintenance, configuration, documentation, and field operations across Shield AI aircraft operations. The role ensures Shield AI maintains continuous, objective insight into aircraft readiness, system integrity, and process conformance
This position combines maintenance process assurance, operational safety, configuration control, and early risk detection. The Inspector validates requirements, verifies execution, identifies nonconformances early, and drives corrective actions that prevent risks from reaching the aircraft, mission, or customer.
The ideal candidate is comfortable working in hangars, test events, field sites, and deployed environments; recognizes disciplined maintenance and operational practices; and converts observations into actionable, scalable assurance data.
What you will do:
- Build and operate a Mission Assurance model for Shield AI Aircraft operations, covering maintenance procedures, documentation, configuration control, support equipment, and field execution
- Define inspection strategy, audit cadence, evidence requirements, data standards, and reporting rhythms.
- Conduct independent inspections of maintenance tasks, logbooks, technical data use, service bulletin compliance, configuration accuracy, release practices, tool/FOD control, ground handling, and field operations.
- Verify maintenance quality, data integrity, critical‑step completion, serial/time‑tracked item accuracy, deferred discrepancy management, and in‑process inspection discipline.
- Develop and execute standardized evaluation programs, including sampling plans, audits, acceptance criteria, and documented finding categories.
- Maintain dashboards and indicators such as maintenance quality, data error rates, open findings, CAPA status, repeat discrepancies, tool/FOD events, and potential readiness blockers.
- Partner with Maintenance, Field Operations, Engineering, and Airworthiness to standardize processes across locations while maintaining independent oversight.
- Escalate safety‑of‑flight, compliance, or data integrity risks; recommend stop‑work, restrictions, additional inspections, or impounds when warranted.
- Support investigations of mishaps, near misses, maintenance errors, and field failures, ensuring accurate reconstruction of maintenance, configuration, and operational timelines.
- Will perform associated follow up inspections to ensure finding are sufficiently resolved
- Maintain the evidence trail required for customer confidence, safety assurance, governance, and quality expectations in a scaling UAS operation.
Required Qualifications:
- 7+ years of experience in aviation maintenance, maintenance QA, maintenance control, field service leadership, or equivalent mission‑critical operational roles.
- Demonstrated ability to build or mature maintenance QA or mission assurance programs.
- Practical expertise with maintenance procedures, logbooks, MIS/work orders, discrepancies, configuration control, service bulletin compliance, tool/FOD control, and aircraft release discipline.
- Hands‑on experience in operational environments (hangars, flightlines, test ranges, customer sites, or deployed locations).
- Strong data discipline and ability to generate accurate, actionable reports and dashboards.
- Working knowledge of audit practices, root‑cause methods, CAPA, and safety/quality systems.
- High ownership and independence; able to ask difficult questions, build trust, and drive corrective actions without unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to travel and support non‑standard operational tempos.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with military aviation maintenance/QA.
- Experience with NASA‑style mission assurance, DoD QA, AS9100, ICAO safety assurance, or similar frameworks.
- Experience supporting developmental flight test programs or rapidly evolving aircraft platforms
- Training in auditing, root‑cause analysis, CAPA, HFACS, TapRooT, Six Sigma, human factors, or maintenance evaluation.
- Experience with autonomous systems, configuration management, telemetry‑based maintenance, or digital maintenance systems.
- Familiarity with aviation safety assurance, risk management, and continuous monitoring.
- Active or eligible security clearance.
Skills Required
- 7+ years of experience in aviation maintenance, maintenance quality assurance, maintenance control, field service leadership, or equivalent mission-critical operational roles
- Experience building or maturing maintenance QA or mission assurance programs
- Expertise with maintenance procedures, logbooks, MIS/work orders, discrepancies, configuration control, service bulletin compliance, tool/FOD control, and aircraft release discipline
- Hands-on experience in hangars, flightlines, test ranges, customer sites, or deployed locations
- Ability to generate accurate, actionable reports and dashboards
- Working knowledge of audit practices, root-cause methods, CAPA, and safety/quality systems
- High ownership, independence, communication, and corrective-action leadership skills
- Ability to travel and support non-standard operational tempos
- Experience with military aviation maintenance or QA
- Experience with NASA-style mission assurance, DoD QA, AS9100, ICAO safety assurance, or similar frameworks
- Experience supporting developmental flight test programs or rapidly evolving aircraft platforms
- Training in auditing, root-cause analysis, CAPA, HFACS, TapRooT, Six Sigma, human factors, or maintenance evaluation
- Experience with autonomous systems, configuration management, telemetry-based maintenance, or digital maintenance systems
- Familiarity with aviation safety assurance, risk management, and continuous monitoring
- Active or eligible security clearance
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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Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
