Shield AI builds intelligent systems that protect service members and civilians. Our products include Hivemind autonomy software and V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and our teams support customers and operations across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
Shield AI is seeking a technical Customer Support Engineer to serve as the front door for Hivemind software support. This role is part customer service representative, part fleet-support engineer: you will intake customer issues, collect the right evidence, triage software and integration problems, route issues to the right owners, and help customers get back to mission-ready operation.
This is a customer-facing technical support role that requires technical depth to understand logs, configuration, versions, APIs, autonomy workflows, software deployment, operator context, and basic code behavior, paired with the discipline to communicate clearly, manage expectations, document outcomes, and keep support work moving through the correct process.
You will partner closely with Forward Deployment Engineers, Product Support Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, Product, Program, Licensing, and core Hivemind engineering teams to turn field-reported issues into actionable tickets, reproducible findings, workarounds, knowledge-base articles, and product-supportability improvements.
What you'll do:
- Serve as the first technical support point of contact for Hivemind software customers, partners, operators, maintainers, and internal field teams.
- Own support intake quality: issue description, mission impact, severity, customer environment, software version, configuration, asset context, logs, screenshots, telemetry, and reproduction steps where available.
- Triage Hivemind Enterprise software, API, licensing/provisioning, deployment, configuration, operator-workflow, and integration issues across fielded systems.
- Distinguish Hivemind software issues from customer configuration, unsupported environment, partner/OEM integration, network, hardware-adjacent, training, or feature-request issues.
- Route issues to the right owner across support operations, Field Deployment Engineering, Product Support Engineering, Sustainment Engineering, Licensing, Product, Program, and core engineering.
- Provide customer-safe updates that explain status, next steps, workarounds, expected evidence, and escalation path .
- Help reproduce or validate issues in lab, simulation, software test, or representative environments when appropriate.
- Analyze logs, telemetry, version state, configuration, release notes, and known issues to support triage and root-cause investigation.
- Convert recurring support cases into knowledge-base articles, troubleshooting guides, known-issue records, intake improvements, diagnostic checklists, and product feedback.
- Support release readiness, update troubleshooting, license/provisioning workflows, customer onboarding, and deployment-to-sustainment handoffs.
- Track support metrics and patterns that help the Sustainment team understand customer pain points, common failure modes, response quality, and supportability gaps.
Projects you may work on:
- Building the Hivemind support intake form and minimum evidence checklist for customer software issues.
- Creating a triage playbook for Hivemind Enterprise/API, license/provisioning, software deployment, configuration, and operator-workflow problems.
- Turning repeated field questions into customer-facing knowledge-base articles and internal escalation runbooks.
- Working with an FDE to convert a deployment issue into a complete support case with logs, versions, impact, workaround, owner, and closure criteria.
- Helping Product Support Engineering identify the top recurring supportability gaps in Hivemind software releases.
- Supporting a customer update or release rollout by tracking incoming issues, workarounds, known issues, and customer-safe status.
Required qualifications:
- 7+ years of experience in technical customer support, fleet support, field support, software support, systems integration, applications engineering, technical operations, or a similar customer-facing technical role.
- Strong troubleshooting mindset and ability to turn ambiguous customer reports into structured, actionable support cases.
- Working knowledge of Linux systems, logs, configuration files, networking basics, software versions, and diagnostic workflows.
- Ability to read and reason about C++ code.
- Ability to understand software behavior across customer workflows, APIs, deployment state, configuration, and integration context.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in customer-facing and cross-functional environments, including calm communication during high-pressure support situations.
- Ability to manage ticket hygiene, severity, ownership, customer updates, evidence requests, escalation paths, and support boundaries with discipline.
- Ability to write concise support notes, troubleshooting guides, known-issue summaries, and customer-safe status updates.
- Comfort operating within export-control, security, sensitive-data, customer-site, safety, commercial, and support-boundary requirements.
- Ability to possess a Secret DoD security clearance as required by customers.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience supporting autonomy software, robotics, unmanned systems, aviation, defense software, mission software, ground control software, SDKs, APIs, or edge-deployed systems.
- Experience supporting deployed software, fleet operations, operational readiness events, test campaigns, or customer-site deployments.
- Familiarity with Python, Bash, SQL, log parsing, telemetry review, or lightweight diagnostic scripting.
- Experience with Jira, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Zendesk, Confluence, or similar support and knowledge-management systems.
- Experience with licensing, provisioning, release management, configuration baselines, offline/air-gapped environments, or customer update workflows.
- Experience using GenAI tools to accelerate troubleshooting, support summarization, documentation, knowledge capture, or support workflow automation.
- Active or prior security clearance.
Skills Required
- 7+ years of experience in technical customer support, fleet support, field support, software support, systems integration, applications engineering, technical operations, or a similar customer-facing technical role.
- Strong troubleshooting mindset and ability to turn ambiguous customer reports into structured, actionable support cases.
- Working knowledge of Linux systems, logs, configuration files, networking basics, software versions, and diagnostic workflows.
- Ability to read and reason about C++ code.
- Ability to understand software behavior across customer workflows, APIs, deployment state, configuration, and integration context.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in customer-facing and cross-functional environments, including calm communication during high-pressure support situations.
- Ability to manage ticket hygiene, severity, ownership, customer updates, evidence requests, escalation paths, and support boundaries with discipline.
- Ability to write concise support notes, troubleshooting guides, known-issue summaries, and customer-safe status updates.
- Comfort operating within export-control, security, sensitive-data, customer-site, safety, commercial, and support-boundary requirements.
- Ability to possess a Secret DoD security clearance as required by customers.
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.
