As a Reliability Test Engineer at Shield AI, you'll prepare, execute, and manage environmental tests on electronic flight hardware across the VBAT and XBAT aircraft, ensuring it meets performance requirements through rigorous thermal, vibration, shock, humidity, and altitude testing. This is a highly hands-on role. Working with design and reliability stakeholders, you'll define test plans — stress profiles, sample sizes, and pass/fail criteria — then bring them to the bench: designing and modeling test fixtures in CAD, instrumenting hardware with thermocouples, accelerometers, strain gauges, and humidity sensors, configuring data acquisition, and programming and loading chambers. You'll frequently run several campaigns at once, owning the equipment scheduling needed to keep them moving without compromising data quality.
Once tests are running, you'll operate the equipment, monitor for and investigate failures, and reduce and document results in clear reports — including the plots and visualizations stakeholders rely on to make disposition and qualification decisions. You'll work with cutting-edge deep-tech hardware, collaborate across disciplines, and directly influence product quality and long-term reliability over the vehicles’ lifecycles.
What You'll Do
Operate and continuously improve a world-class environmental test lab for electronics that includes HALT/HASS chambers, thermal-humidity chambers, vibration/shock equipment, and data acquisition equipment.
Develop and implement lab procedures for use of environmental test equipment, test setup and tear down, data acquision, and test reporting.
Perform reliability tests on electronic products, including thermal cycling, temperature-humidity soaks, HALT, HASS, vibration, and shock testing.
Develop lab best-practices, including automation of data acquisition, defining test plans, documenting test results, and management of tests.
Manage procurement and maintenance of lab consumables, including instrumentation, adhesives, fasteners, and fixtures.
Oversee the maintenance, organization, and safety of all laboratory equipment and work areas.
Work with external laboratories to perform environmental tests as necessary.
Educate stakeholders on environmental test best-practices to improve test plans and design-for-test practices.
Stay current with industry trends, advancements, and best practices in all aspects of environmental testing and equipment.
Required Qualifications
2+ years of experience with environmental testing, including temperature cycling, vibration, highly accelerated limit testing (HALT), and highly-accelerated stress screening (HASS).
Candidate must be self-starting and come with a growth mindset, with excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering or Reliability Engineering.
Proficiency in CAD modelling software, including ANSYS SpaceClaim, NX, or Solidworks.
Knowledgeable in data acquisition equipment and instrumentation, including thermocouples, accelerometers, humidity sensors, and strain gauges.
Familiarity with electronics (PCBs, PCBAs, electronic components) and moving mechanical assemblies. Knowledgeable in failure mechanisms including solder fatigue, intermetallic growth, conductive anodic filaments, tin whiskers, electromigration, and corrosion.
Team-player with clear and concise written and oral communication skills.
Experience working with interdisciplinary teams to execute product design from concept to production.
Experience with management of technical projects.
Familiarity with relevant industry test standards, including IPC, JEDEC, MIL, and ASTM standards.
Preferred Qualifications
5+ years of experience in a reliability testing role, including temperature cycling, vibration, highly accelerated limit testing (HALT), and highly-accelerated stress screening (HASS).
Familiarity with reliability concepts, including Weibull statistics, accelerated life test design, highly-accelerated limit testing (HALT), and highly-accelerated stress screening (HASS).
Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering or Reliability Engineering.
Prior experience managing an environmental test lab.
Proficiency in Python, including NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, Plotly, and Matplotlib.
· Familiarity with PCB fabrication, SMT, and polymerics application manufacturing processes.
· Proficiency in FEA modelling software, including ANSYS Mechanical, Siemens Simcenter, or Abaqus.
Skills Required
- 2+ years of experience with environmental testing, including temperature cycling, vibration, HALT, and HASS
- Self-starting, growth mindset, excellent problem-solving skills, and attention to detail
- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Reliability Engineering
- Proficiency with CAD modeling software such as ANSYS SpaceClaim, NX, or SolidWorks
- Knowledge of data acquisition equipment and instrumentation, including thermocouples, accelerometers, humidity sensors, and strain gauges
- Familiarity with electronics, moving mechanical assemblies, and reliability failure mechanisms
- Clear written and oral communication skills and ability to work collaboratively
- Experience working with interdisciplinary teams to execute product design from concept to production
- Experience managing technical projects
- Familiarity with IPC, JEDEC, MIL, and ASTM industry test standards
- 5+ years of experience in reliability testing, including temperature cycling, vibration, HALT, and HASS
- Familiarity with Weibull statistics, accelerated life test design, HALT, and HASS reliability concepts
- Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Reliability Engineering
- Prior experience managing an environmental test lab
- Familiarity with PCB fabrication, SMT, and polymerics application manufacturing processes
- Proficiency with FEA software such as ANSYS Mechanical, Siemens Simcenter, or Abaqus
- Proficiency in Python, including NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, Plotly, and Matplotlib
What the Team is Saying
Shield AI Compensation & Benefits Highlights
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
