The Principal Material Review Board Engineer leads the development and execution of Material Review Board processes for fielded UAS platforms and related systems. This role is responsible for dispositioning nonconforming hardware, developing standard repair procedures, and establishing scalable repair governance processes for post-production, depot, and field sustainment operations.
This individual serves as a senior technical authority for repair development, nonconforming material disposition, returned material evaluation, production escape resolution, and sustainment repair governance. The role partners closely with responsible engineers, design engineering, manufacturing engineering, quality, supply chain, fleet support, sustainment engineering, and chief engineers to ensure repair dispositions protect structural integrity, safety, reliability, maintainability, configuration control, and fleet readiness.
The Principal MRB Engineer supports sustainment by driving technically sound, traceable, and repeatable dispositions for damaged components, field returns, production escapes, supplier nonconformances, and hardware issues that affect aircraft availability and customer support.
What you'll do:
- Establish and mature the Material Review Board process for post-production hardware, fielded assemblies, depot repairs, and sustainment-related nonconformances.
- Lead technical dispositions for nonconforming material, damaged hardware, returned components, field returns, production escapes, and repairable assemblies.
- Develop standard repair procedures, repair limits, inspection criteria, and disposition guidance for recurring hardware issues.
- Support returned material analysis, production quality deficiency reports, production escape investigations, and field hardware issue reviews.
- Partner with responsible engineers, design engineering, manufacturing engineering, quality, fleet support, supply chain, and chief engineers to ensure dispositions are technically sound and executable.
- Ensure MRB dispositions are documented, traceable, configuration-controlled, and aligned with engineering, quality, and sustainment requirements.
- Identify trends in nonconformances, supplier issues, manufacturing defects, field damage, repair escapes, and recurring hardware failures.
- Work with Failure Analysis, Reliability and Maintainability Engineering, and Root Cause and Corrective Action teams to resolve recurring hardware issues.
- Partner with Manufacturing Engineering and Quality to improve inspection methods, acceptance criteria, repair execution, test processes, and production controls.
- Support supplier quality investigations when supplier parts, materials, or assemblies impact aircraft sustainment or fleet readiness.
- Provide technical input to corrective actions, product health reviews, repair governance reviews, and sustainment leadership updates.
- Help ensure hardware issues are resolved in a way that protects safety, quality, reliability, configuration discipline, customer support, and fleet readiness.
- Mentor engineers and cross-functional partners on MRB discipline, disposition quality, repair documentation, and sustainment repair governance.
Required qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in Material Review Board, quality engineering, manufacturing engineering, sustaining engineering, aerospace structures, aviation maintenance, hardware product support, or complex hardware sustainment.
- Demonstrated experience dispositioning nonconforming hardware, damaged components, returned material, production escapes, field failures, or repairable assemblies.
- Strong understanding of nonconforming material processes, MRB workflows, repair dispositions, inspection records, engineering documentation, and corrective action systems.
- Experience developing or approving repair procedures, rework instructions, inspection criteria, use-as-is dispositions, repair dispositions, or scrap/replacement recommendations.
- Strong technical judgment with the ability to evaluate hardware issues based on safety, structural integrity, reliability, maintainability, configuration impact, and fleet readiness.
- Experience working across engineering, quality, manufacturing, supply chain, fleet support, sustainment, and operations teams to resolve hardware issues.
- Ability to interpret engineering drawings, specifications, inspection results, manufacturing records, repair records, and field evidence.
- Strong documentation discipline, including the ability to write clear technical dispositions, repair rationale, risk assessments, and corrective action inputs.
- Ability to operate independently as a principal technical IC and influence cross-functional decisions without direct authority.
- Ability to balance engineering rigor, quality requirements, configuration control, field urgency, and customer support needs.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with aviation, defense, aerospace manufacturing, unmanned systems, aircraft sustainment, depot repair, field repair, or deployed hardware systems.
- Experience with composite structures, metallic structures, bonded assemblies, fastened assemblies, avionics hardware, propulsion components, payload interfaces, or complex electromechanical assemblies.
- Familiarity with RCCA, FRACAS, PQDR, AS9100, configuration management, ECO/ECR processes, service bulletins, maintenance releases, or field retrofit execution.
- Experience supporting supplier quality investigations, production escape resolution, returned material analysis, depot repair development, or field repair governance.
- Experience building scalable MRB processes, repair governance mechanisms, standard repair libraries, or sustainment disposition workflows.
- Experience supporting military, government, international, or deployed aviation customers.
- Familiarity with ITAR, export-controlled technical data, controlled customer environments, or defense operational support.
- Active Secret or Top Secret clearance preferred.
Skills Required
- 10+ years experience in MRB, quality, manufacturing, sustaining engineering, aerospace structures, aviation maintenance, hardware product support, or complex hardware sustainment
- Demonstrated experience dispositioning nonconforming hardware, damaged components, returned material, production escapes, field failures, or repairable assemblies
- Strong understanding of nonconforming material processes, MRB workflows, repair dispositions, inspection records, engineering documentation, and corrective action systems
- Experience developing or approving repair procedures, rework instructions, inspection criteria, use-as-is or repair dispositions, and scrap/replacement recommendations
- Strong technical judgment to evaluate hardware issues for safety, structural integrity, reliability, maintainability, configuration impact, and fleet readiness
- Experience collaborating with engineering, quality, manufacturing, supply chain, fleet support, sustainment, and operations teams
- Ability to interpret engineering drawings, specifications, inspection results, manufacturing and repair records, and field evidence
- Strong documentation discipline to write technical dispositions, repair rationale, risk assessments, and corrective action inputs
- Ability to operate independently as a principal technical individual contributor and influence cross-functional decisions without direct authority
- Ability to balance engineering rigor, quality requirements, configuration control, field urgency, and customer support needs
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Gallery
%203.jpg)
Shield AI Teams
.jpg)
Shield AI Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
