We’re looking for a Staff Engineer to lead V-BAT’s fleet data analysis efforts. The V-BAT system produces rich data from real-world flight tests, fielded aircraft, production activity, and simulation runs.
You will own the analysis pipelines, tooling, standards, and metrics that help the team understand fleet-wide system performance derived from information from software and hardware systems. You will facilitate deep studies into flight-critical sensor performance, navigation, communications, and other key aircraft behaviors. You will work closely with DevOps, Flight Software, Flight Test, Production, Quality, and Operations teams to turn complex aircraft data into actionable engineering insight.
What you'll do:
- Lead the technical strategy for V-BAT fleet data analysis across fielded aircraft, flight test, simulation, production, and quality workflows
- Own and improve the pipelines that transform raw flight, simulation, and fleet data into reliable engineering metrics, reports, and analysis products
- Conduct fleet-wide studies to identify trends in hardware quality, system performance, reliability, and operational behavior
- Analyze flight-critical sensor performance, GNSS-denied navigation performance, communications behavior, and other aircraft subsystems that are critical to mission success
- Standardize the team’s analysis methods across online tools, Jupyter notebooks, automated Python scripts, and legacy Matlab workflows
- Define best practices for analysis methods, data review, documentation, validation, reproducibility, and contribution workflows
- Build automated Python workflows that make high-value metrics easily accessible to engineering, production, quality, and leadership teams
- Partner with DevOps to build, deploy, maintain, and scale the infrastructure required for automated analysis pipelines and dashboards
- Work with Software, GNC, Embedded, Flight Test, Systems, Production, Quality, and Operations teams to define metrics that reflect aircraft performance and product health
- Support anomaly investigations, root-cause analysis, release readiness, production quality improvements, and customer-impacting fleet investigations with rigorous data analysis
- Mentor engineers on effective data analysis practices and raise the quality bar for data-driven engineering decisions across the V-BAT team
Required qualifications:
- 5+ years of relevant experience with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related technical field
- Strong Python skills and experience building data analysis tools, automated analysis workflows, or data pipelines
- Experience analyzing data from fielded physical products such as aerospace systems, automotive systems, robotics platforms, commercial electronics, IoT devices, industrial equipment, or similarly complex real-world systems
- Experience working with large, messy datasets from deployed products, test events, simulations, production systems, or operational environments
- Ability to translate ambiguous engineering questions into structured analysis, sound conclusions, and clear recommendations
- Strong communication skills and the ability to influence cross-functional engineering, production, quality, and operations teams
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience with flight test data, aircraft telemetry, UAVs, robotics, autonomy, embedded systems, GNC, navigation systems, communications systems, or aerospace sensor suites
- Experience with Matlab, Jupyter, or similar analysis and visualization tools
- Experience building production-quality dashboards, automated reports, data products, or fleet-health monitoring systems
- Experience with databases, cloud storage, data lake architectures, time-series databases, telemetry systems, or data cataloging
- Experience with anomaly detection, trend analysis, statistical process control, reliability analysis, regression detection, or automated validation of complex systems
Skills Required
- 5+ years of relevant experience with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or related technical field
- Strong Python skills and experience building data analysis tools, automated analysis workflows, or data pipelines
- Experience analyzing data from fielded physical products such as aerospace systems, automotive systems, robotics platforms, commercial electronics, IoT devices, or similarly complex real-world systems
- Experience working with large, messy datasets from deployed products, test events, simulations, production systems, or operational environments
- Ability to translate ambiguous engineering questions into structured analysis, sound conclusions, and clear recommendations
- Strong communication skills and ability to influence cross-functional engineering, production, quality, and operations teams
- Experience with flight test data, aircraft telemetry, UAVs, robotics, autonomy, embedded systems, GNC, navigation, communications, or aerospace sensor suites
- Experience with Matlab, Jupyter, or similar analysis and visualization tools
- Experience building production-quality dashboards, automated reports, data products, or fleet-health monitoring systems
- Experience with databases, cloud storage, data lake architectures, time-series databases, telemetry systems, or data cataloging
- Experience with anomaly detection, trend analysis, statistical process control, reliability analysis, regression detection, or automated validation
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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Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
