Shield AI builds intelligent systems that protect service members and civilians. Our products include Hivemind autonomy software and aircraft systems, and our teams support customers and operations across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
Shield AI is seeking a senior, hands-on UxS Integration and Systems Expert to help ensure Hivemind can be developed, tested, demonstrated, and supported on representative unmanned systems with confidence. This role sits at the intersection of autonomy software, unmanned aircraft and robotic systems, onboard compute, networking, radios, sensors, flight controllers, simulation, test operations, and customer-facing demonstrations.
This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who is both a builder and an operator. The right candidate can move comfortably from architecture discussions to benchtop integration, from lab troubleshooting to field execution, and from platform evaluation to clear recommendations for engineering, test, product, and operations leaders.
You will serve as a trusted systems-integration authority for Hivemind test and demonstration hardware. You will help teams select and prepare representative platforms, understand integration tradeoffs, improve test readiness, diagnose cross-disciplinary issues, and translate lessons from real hardware into better engineering, test, and operational practice. The role requires strong judgment, calm execution under pressure, and the ability to bring structure to ambiguous technical environments without overfitting to a single platform or workflow.
What you'll do:
- Serve as a senior technical focal point for Hivemind integration and test readiness across unmanned aircraft, robotic systems, representative test vehicles, onboard compute, radios, sensors, payloads, and supporting ground equipment.
- Lead hands-on integration and troubleshooting efforts that span autonomy software, hardware, flight controllers, communications systems, networking, operator interfaces, and field operations.
- Partner with engineering, test, product, operations, field, and customer-facing teams to evaluate new platforms and determine how they can best support Hivemind development, validation, training, demonstrations, and customer objectives.
- Help take systems from early concept or benchtop integration through representative test, field execution, and operationally relevant demonstrations.
- Provide senior-level technical judgment on platform suitability, integration complexity, test readiness, risk, safety, maintainability, cost, availability, and customer value.
- Support test planning and execution across simulated, hardware-in-the-loop, live-vehicle, and flight-test environments while keeping the role focused on practical system readiness and evidence quality.
- Help define clear readiness criteria, test expectations, operating assumptions, and handoff points for representative hardware used by Hivemind teams.
- Diagnose complex cross-disciplinary issues and help route them effectively across software, autonomy, hardware, flight-test, networking, and operations stakeholders.
- Contribute to test methods, metrics, and evidence practices that improve confidence in Hivemind behavior across representative and real-world environments.
- Support automation, tooling, and data-review practices that improve repeatability, reduce manual burden, and make hardware-based testing easier to operate at scale.
- Capture and share practical knowledge from platform bring-up, test events, flight operations, and customer-facing demonstrations so teams can reuse lessons learned.
- Mentor engineers and operators on systems integration, hardware readiness, field troubleshooting, test discipline, and practical autonomy test execution.
Projects you might work on:
- Evaluating a new unmanned aircraft, ground robot, customer-selected platform, or lab setup for suitability as a Hivemind development, test, training, or demonstration asset.
- Leading technical preparation for a Hivemind test event or customer demonstration that depends on representative hardware, onboard compute, communications, sensors, and operator workflows.
- Advising a program team on the right level of platform fidelity needed for a pilot effort, internal test campaign, or customer-facing technical engagement.
- Supporting integration between Hivemind and flight-control systems, onboard compute, sensors, payloads, radios, ground-control equipment, or simulation environments.
- Helping a test team define practical readiness criteria, test coverage, data-review expectations, and evidence standards for hardware-based autonomy validation.
- Working with engineering and operations leaders to turn lessons from field or lab execution into reusable guidance, training, and better test practices.
Required qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in UxS or UAS systems integration, robotics hardware integration, autonomy test operations, flight test, field engineering, embedded systems, or similar hands-on technical roles.
- Demonstrated experience leading complex integration efforts across hardware, software, autonomy, networking, communications, sensors, and operational test environments.
- Strong practical experience bringing up, configuring, operating, and troubleshooting unmanned systems, onboard compute, flight controllers, radios, sensors, ground stations, and supporting test equipment.
- Working knowledge of Linux, embedded systems, networking, system configuration, data collection, logs, services, and field diagnostics.
- Experience with unmanned-systems autopilot or flight-control ecosystems such as PX4, ArduPilot, MAVLink, Pixhawk/Cube-class flight controllers, QGroundControl, Mission Planner, or equivalent systems.
- Experience supporting testing across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, live-vehicle, field, or flight-test environments.
- Ability to develop and communicate test plans, readiness criteria, operating assumptions, technical recommendations, and post-test findings for cross-functional audiences.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and debugging skills across ambiguous, cross-disciplinary technical issues.
- Ability to lead through influence across engineering, test, product, operations, field, and customer-facing teams.
- Familiarity with scripting, automation, or data-analysis workflows using Python, Bash, MATLAB, or similar tools.
- Strong ownership, urgency, and judgment in fast-moving environments where requirements, platforms, and constraints may evolve quickly.
- Ability to comply with export-control, safety, security, customer-site, and mission-specific operating requirements.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance; U.S. citizenship required.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with Hivemind, autonomy SDKs, autonomous aircraft systems, robotics middleware, simulation infrastructure, or edge-deployed autonomy software.
- Hands-on experience with NVIDIA Jetson, embedded Linux, systemd services, containerized deployment, device provisioning, and field update workflows.
- Experience with RF/radio setup, mesh networking, tactical datalinks, software-defined radios, or communications-degraded test scenarios.
- Experience supporting flight test, range operations, customer trials, operational rehearsals, or complex demonstrations.
- Experience integrating EO/IR cameras, gimbals, lidar, GPS/GNSS, IMUs, payloads, or perception sensors.
- Experience contributing to test automation, regression frameworks, data validation, performance benchmarking, or CI/CD-integrated test workflows.
- Familiarity with C++ for debugging, interface review, or collaboration with software engineering teams.
- FAA Part 107, private pilot license, military UAS, aviation maintenance, flight-test, or range-safety experience.
- Experience defining reference configurations, hardware baselines, supported configurations, or setup guidance for internal and external users.
- Active Secret clearance or higher.
Skills Required
- 10+ years of experience in UxS or UAS systems integration, robotics hardware integration, autonomy test operations, flight test, field engineering, embedded systems, or similar hands-on technical roles.
- Demonstrated experience leading complex integration efforts across hardware, software, autonomy, networking, communications, sensors, and operational test environments.
- Strong practical experience bringing up, configuring, operating, and troubleshooting unmanned systems, onboard compute, flight controllers, radios, sensors, ground stations, and supporting test equipment.
- Working knowledge of Linux, embedded systems, networking, system configuration, data collection, logs, services, and field diagnostics.
- Experience with unmanned-systems autopilot or flight-control ecosystems such as PX4, ArduPilot, MAVLink, Pixhawk/Cube-class flight controllers, QGroundControl, Mission Planner, or equivalent systems.
- Experience supporting testing across simulation, hardware-in-the-loop, live-vehicle, field, or flight-test environments.
- Ability to develop and communicate test plans, readiness criteria, operating assumptions, technical recommendations, and post-test findings for cross-functional audiences.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and debugging skills across ambiguous, cross-disciplinary technical issues.
- Ability to lead through influence across engineering, test, product, operations, field, and customer-facing teams.
- Familiarity with scripting, automation, or data-analysis workflows using Python, Bash, MATLAB, or similar tools.
- Strong ownership, urgency, and judgment in fast-moving environments where requirements, platforms, and constraints may evolve quickly.
- Ability to comply with export-control, safety, security, customer-site, and mission-specific operating requirements.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance; U.S. citizenship required.
- Experience with Hivemind, autonomy SDKs, autonomous aircraft systems, robotics middleware, simulation infrastructure, or edge-deployed autonomy software.
- Hands-on experience with NVIDIA Jetson, embedded Linux, systemd services, containerized deployment, device provisioning, and field update workflows.
- Experience with RF/radio setup, mesh networking, tactical datalinks, software-defined radios, or communications-degraded test scenarios.
- Experience supporting flight test, range operations, customer trials, operational rehearsals, or complex demonstrations.
- Experience integrating EO/IR cameras, gimbals, lidar, GPS/GNSS, IMUs, payloads, or perception sensors.
- Experience contributing to test automation, regression frameworks, data validation, performance benchmarking, or CI/CD-integrated test workflows.
- Familiarity with C++ for debugging, interface review, or collaboration with software engineering teams.
- FAA Part 107, private pilot license, military UAS, aviation maintenance, flight-test, or range-safety experience.
- Experience defining reference configurations, hardware baselines, supported configurations, or setup guidance for internal and external users.
- Active Secret clearance or higher.
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.
