As a System Integration Test Engineer, you will integrate and verify Shield AI's Hivemind mission autonomy software directly on Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) flight hardware. You will serve as the hands-on technical bridge between autonomy algorithms and physical aircraft systems, working across Shield AI and aircraft platform vendors to verify system interfaces, validate edge compute performance, and resolve integration issues before flight testing.
You will drive integration across Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) environments, both in Shield AI's internal laboratories and on-site at platform vendor integration facilities (including SIL, HIL, and iron bird test benches). You will turn high-level program objectives into executable integration plans, schedules, and test cards, systematically uncovering interface gaps early and formulating technical solutions to close them. This is an essential, high-impact role for an engineer who excels at the intersection where complex mission software meets real aircraft avionics and hardware.
What you'll do:
- Integrate Mission Autonomy on ACP Hardware: Deploy, integrate, and verify Hivemind mission autonomy software with actual ACP software and hardware in Shield AI and platform vendor SIL and HIL labs.
- Develop Test & Integration Plans: Develop detailed integration test plans, test cards, schedules, and objective success criteria across lab, ground, and flight test phases.
- Identify & Resolve Integration Gaps: Proactively identify architectural, interface, protocol, timing, and hardware/software gaps early; formulate concrete gap-closure plans, risk mitigations, and technical workarounds alongside Shield engineering and platform partners.
- Coordinate Joint Vendor Lab Execution: Partner directly with aircraft OEMs and platform vendors to coordinate lab readiness, align entry/exit criteria, deconflict bench time, and co-execute joint integration campaigns.
- Conduct Hands-On Lab Triage: Execute integration tests, configure test benches, and lead real-time troubleshooting of multi-system anomalies
- Drive Test Automation & Tooling: Coordinate across engineering teams to design and build test automation and simulation scripts to accelerate development
- Gate Flight Readiness & Support Flight Test: Enforce empirical test entry/exit criteria to gate delivery to aircraft ground and flight test; support flight test preparation, configuration validation, real-time troubleshooting, and post-flight data analysis.
- Support travel to test sites, customer events, and integration activities as required
Required qualifications:
- Typically requires 5+ years of relevant experience with a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Electrical, Computer, Mechanical, Systems Engineering, or related technical field, or 3+ years with a Master's degree.
- Lab & Hardware Integration: Demonstrated experience in system integration and test, including SIL, HIL, simulation, and flight test environments.
- Test Planning & Documentation: Proven ability to author clear, comprehensive integration test plans, procedures, and test cards, and translate test results into actionable engineering findings and gap closure roadmaps.
- Troubleshooting & Analysis: Strong experience troubleshooting complex system interfaces using telemetry, logs, packet capture tools (e.g., Wireshark), or hardware diagnostic equipment.
- Scripting & Linux: Proficiency with Linux operating systems and scripting languages (Python preferred) for test automation, data analysis, and hardware bench interfacing.
- Communication & Organization: Highly organized and methodical, with the ability to organize integration tasks, track dependencies, and coordinate work across distributed engineering teams and external partners.
- Travel Flexibility: Willingness and ability to travel periodically to platform vendor facilities and flight test locations as program needs require.
- Clearance & Citizenship: Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. DoD SECRET security clearance; U.S. citizenship required.
Preferred qualifications:
- Autonomous & Uncrewed Systems: Experience with Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACP), Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), UAS (Group 4/5), or military aircraft mission systems.
- OEM / Prime Contractor Experience: Experience working directly inside aircraft manufacturer or defense prime contractor integration labs (e.g., Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, Anduril).
- Open Architecture Standards: Familiarity with open systems architectures such as Open Mission Systems (OMS), Universal Command and Control Interface (UCI), and Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA).
- Middleware & Frameworks: Experience with inter-process communication and messaging middleware (e.g., DDS, ROS/ROS2, ZeroMQ, gRPC).
- Safety & Airworthiness: Understanding of airworthiness processes, safety-of-flight standards, or software assurance guidelines (e.g., DO-178C, DO-254, MIL-STD-882E).
- Active Clearance: Active DoD SECRET or TOP SECRET clearance.
What success looks like:
Mission autonomy and aircraft hardware/avionics operate reliably and deterministically together in representative SIL and HIL labs well before aircraft ground and flight testing. Integration gaps and interface discrepancies are surfaced and resolved early, configurations and master test schedules are transparent and aligned across vendors, and rigorous lab test results provide the high-confidence empirical evidence needed to clear the aircraft for flight.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of relevant experience with a bachelor's degree in aerospace, electrical, computer, mechanical, systems engineering, or a related technical field; or 3+ years with a master's degree.
- Experience in system integration and test, including SIL, HIL, simulation, and flight-test environments.
- Ability to author integration test plans, procedures, test cards, and gap-closure roadmaps.
- Experience troubleshooting complex system interfaces using telemetry, logs, packet-capture tools, or hardware diagnostic equipment.
- Proficiency with Linux operating systems and scripting languages, preferably Python, for test automation, data analysis, and hardware-bench interfacing.
- Strong organizational, communication, task-tracking, dependency-management, and external-partner coordination skills.
- Willingness and ability to travel periodically to vendor facilities and flight-test locations.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. DoD SECRET security clearance.
- U.S. citizenship.
- Experience with autonomous collaborative platforms, collaborative combat aircraft, Group 4/5 UAS, or military aircraft mission systems.
- Experience working in aircraft manufacturer or defense-prime integration laboratories.
- Familiarity with OMS, UCI, or MOSA open-architecture standards.
- Experience with DDS, ROS/ROS2, ZeroMQ, or gRPC middleware and frameworks.
- Understanding of airworthiness processes, safety-of-flight standards, DO-178C, DO-254, or MIL-STD-882E.
- Active DoD SECRET or TOP SECRET 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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